


Here Stands a Man

by awkwardCerberus



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: ALL BC OF HOW WONDERFUL YOU GUYS ARE, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Black Lion, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Heavy Angst, Inconsistent chapter lengths, Keith is Not Having It™, Keith is strugglin, Let Keith Cry 2017, Let Keith Go Off 2017, Mild character studies, Mind Meld, Not Shippy, Post-Season/Series 02, Season 2 spoilers, Shiro needs a fuckin hug, Team as Family, all aboard the angst train kiddos, back at it with the corny action sequences, back at it with the random female Galra, cheesy endings, extremely brief Galra Keith, i swear they were cooler in my head, idk technically, jeez sophia chill with the metaphors and idioms, literally the best thing I've ever made ????, the lions are somewhat sentient, theres Mind Stuff, this is self indulgence mostly, this ones looooooong kiddos, throwin in that subtle klance bc fight me, what I want to happen after season 2, youd think at this point I'd learn how to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-09-19 07:27:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9425759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardCerberus/pseuds/awkwardCerberus
Summary: Following his disappearance after their defeat of Zarkon, Shiro is found floating through space and picked up by a Galran transport delivering a hold full of prisoners to a labor camp.Back at the Castle, the remains of Team Voltron are doing whatever they can to get Shiro back, and trying hard not to fall apart in the process.





	1. With a Bullet in His Clenched Right Hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Season 2 wrecked me. Like it legitimately destroyed my and i cried for a good ten minutes after watching it the first time. So why not devote all my time and creative power into another long ass Voltron fic? 
> 
> Special thanks to Shelby for all the help getting this off the ground. 
> 
> Main title and chapter titles are from "The War" by Syml. The theme/tone were inspired by "Do You Realize" by Ursine Vulpine.

The first thing he was taught in astronaut training was that space is a void. It is empty and full of nothing. There is no oxygen, no sound, and no movement. The exact words his instructor used were: "you can kick, scream, punch, and swear all you want, but it won't do you any good. Because space is nothing".

Space is nothing.

Shiro couldn't remember a time that he'd ever felt more nothingness. He was floating now, aimlessly and half conscious, through some galaxy that was made up of dark blues and reds. He'd passed through a field of what looked like tiny lights, although he couldn't find the strength to reach out and touch one. He couldn't find strength at all. He drew in a slow breath and closed his eyes.

He remembered the first time he'd met Keith. Garrison security had found him breaking into the motorpool and trying to steal the propulsion system off one of the hover bikes. Shiro had been a lieutenant then, but he knew potential when he saw it, and it came as a serious shock when he pushed harder than anyone for Keith's acceptance into the Garrison. He was so proud when Keith received an award for highest consecutive simulator scores, and the day that Keith made fighter pilot class, he made sure his was the first signature on the approval form. Shiro was smart enough to know that the reason Keith dropped out was because of the Garrison's attempts to hide what happened on Kerberos. He was still as proud now as he had been back then.

Shiro even remembered the first time he'd met Lance and Hunk. It was still a few months before Kerberos, and he'd been asked to give a lecture to some of the..."less skilled teams," was the wording that his superior had used. In a half full classroom full of teenagers who looked like they physically could not care less, there was one person in the back who stood out: a cargo pilot who had more crashes than landings, but whose hand was almost always raised. His engineer had a reputation for getting motion sick in the cockpit, but he took enough notes to write a book. They asked the most enthusiastic questions, and Shiro was surprised how intelligent they were despite their scores. They even came up to shake his hand afterwards, something even most adults rarely did anymore.

He couldn't forget the first time he'd met Pidge - or rather, met Katie Holt. Sam had invited him over for dinner the same day he'd met him. Sam had been a firm believer in good first impressions, and Shiro felt bad refusing the offer. Katie had been twelve then, and a perfect copy and paste of Matt. He sat next to her at the table, and when he asked what she like to do for fun, she spent almost two hours telling him the science projects she had now and all the ones she planned to do in the future. By the end of the night, he had more information about repurposing DVD players than he thought he needed, and he knew Neptune's moons in order of her most to least favorite (Neso was her favorite, but she had no love for Halimede).

He though about Allura leading some intergalactic United Nations, Coran at her side. She seemed to fit right in at the head of a long table, talking to leaders from hundreds of different races about rebuilding this or improving the trade agreements for that. He could see her on a Balmera somewhere, taking a crystal from the side of a mountain and offering up a piece of her Quintessence in exchange. He imagined her teaching another small group how to defend them in battle, and almost smiled at the thought of her showing off when her students struggled on level one.

Voltron would disappear back into legend. The Lions would be hidden away in temples scattered throughout the galaxies, waiting until they were needed again. Perhaps some cultures would worship the Lions as goddesses like the Arusians had. Centuries from now, would parents tell their children bedtime stories about how five humans, whose names were lost in the past, saved the whole universe from Zarkon?

For just a moment, Shiro opened his eyes. There was a brilliant swirl of red around him - a deep maroon in some places, and a vibrant carmine in others. He could see a planet off in the distance, or maybe he was so exhausted he was imagining things. It was small and white, and if he squinted he could see little black specs on it. Something in his chest tightened, and for the first time in almost two years, he felt homesick for Kerberos.

That mission had ruined his life, but it had also saved it. He could count six reasons why it had saved it, and it had been an honor fight alongside all six of them. Maybe somewhere back on Earth, people were still thinking about them. About those three people that got lost in space due to a false pilot error; about those three kids that ran away from the Galaxy Garrison and were never found; about that weird, flying, blue cat out over the Nevada desert.

If he died right now, he wouldn't mind. They'd saved the universe. He'd done his duty, he lived a full life.

Shiro closed his eyes again. There was something warm around him, like he was being lowered into a bath. He felt his body being pulled up by this warm thing and it felt like he was returning somewhere that he hadn't been in forever. Maybe he really was dying, and this is what it felt like. When his grandfather passed away, his father told him that it was like falling asleep without waking up.

He could do that. He could fall asleep and stay there forever.

* * *

Waking up was an unfortunate process that made Shiro miss whatever darkness he had been in. He had always assumed that waking up after death meant walking through a bright light and ending up in a field of some kind, where all the friends and family you'd lost were waiting to welcome you into whatever afterlife there was.

But there was no bright light, or fields, or awaiting loved ones. There was only more darkness, and pain, and he was still alone.

He was laying on something hard and cold, and there was a faint purple light coming from the cracks in the door on the opposite wall. He tried to sit up on his own, but it felt like the air had been knocked from his lungs. Shiro put a hand on the wall to steady himself as he tried getting up a second time, and he felt cold metal beneath his skin. His hand came away slightly sticky and thinking about what it might be made his stomach roll.

Every inch of his body hurt. His ears were ringing and it felt like someone had dropped something very heavy on the back of his head. Shiro didn't like to say that he was an expert on the feeling of someone pushing him out of his own head, but he had recently grown accustomed what that felt like. He sat crisscross with his elbows on his knees, forcing himself to draw in one stale breath after another.

The air was sickening. It was somehow clammy and dry at the same time, but it smelled like blood, excrement, and rot. It hung heavy around him, as though it had a tangible weight to it. Shiro had smelled air like that once before, and it was not a smell he would easily forget. He stood up and ran a hand over his chest, feeling around for the armor that wasn't there. Where his chest plate should have been, there was only rough, thin fabric.

He realized, in a way that felt like he'd been shot in the chest, that he wasn't as dead as he previously thought. But, oh, how he wished he was.

Shiro swallowed thickly. There were only a select few things in this life that were as familiar to him as his current location. His old bedroom at his parents' house; the big backyard at his grandparents' house in Akita; the cockpit of the Descartes 1 on the way to Kerberos.

The inside of a Galra prison cell.

The cell was incredibly small, and it only took him one short stride to reach the door. Something curdled in the back of his mind - cells this small were only in solitary confinement. Normal cells were large enough to fit seven or more prisoners in one cell, but in here, Shiro could hold both arms out to the side and press his palms flat against the walls.

He didn't understand. Voltron had killed Zarkon - _he_ had killed Zarkon. It was over, the Galra empire would fall because Voltron and its Paladins had saved the universe. They had won. It was over. He'd escaped.

Yet here he was.

Shiro pounded on the door with both fists, like a petulant child throwing a tantrum. He screamed at nothing and no one; calling for the rest of the team as loud as he humanly could, calling for the Black Lion, he even called out for Matt and Sam once. When his voice cracked and his throat had been screamed raw, he kicked at the door with everything he had left. He could feel a faint dip in the metal under his prosthetic fist, but it got him no closer to freedom.

Outside his cell, and further away to his left, there was the repetitive clip of metal feet on a metal floor. The closer the sound got, the more dread pooled in the pit of Shiro's stomach. He knew they were Galra sentries, but something in him still refused to believe it. The footsteps stopped outside the door to his cell, and he could feel them standing in front of the door.

There was a single, thundering _BANG_ against the cell door that sent Shiro flinching away from the dark metal. The shutter on a small window near the top of the door slid open, and for one naive second, Shiro hoped it would be Keith, or Lance, or Pidge, or someone that would get him out of there. He thought that maybe, just maybe, he could escape again. He would even settle for another prisoner trying to make a break for it.

He should have known better.

Shiro had to look out the small window at an angle to see who it was. Standing between two sentries was a shorter, older Galra, whose eyes were just a hair below the slit in the door. He must have been a slaver - he looked much too out of shape to be a soldier, and he was wearing somewhat civilian clothes.

"What's with all this noise? It's still the bleedin' night cycle! People are tryin' to sleep!"

Shiro stood with the toes of his boots flush against the door, pressing his face against the small window desperately, "you have to help me - please! I don't know what I'm doing here, but I have to get back to the Castle!"

The Galra barked out a sharp laugh and an "uh-huh, sure," before he pulled a portable manifest from a pocket on his belt. He waved it around in front of the window, "these here are transport orders. I got a hold full of prisoners goin' to the factory on Nadarè. I'm at full capacity right now! Do you know how much GAC that's worth? Like frak I'm letting you go."

"No, no, no, you have to let me go! I have to find them! I have to find my team! And Allura, and - "

Shiro saw one of the sentries slam the butt of its rifle against the door, and the second _BANG_ sent him reeling backwards. His feet tangled around each other in the small space, and he fell backwards onto the floor like a bag of dropped rocks. He knew he was breathing much too fast, but the air felt as thin and as sharp as glass and no matter how much he tried to suck in, it still felt as though he was drowning.

He pulled his knees into his chest and pressed his hands around his ears. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to imagine himself somewhere else. It didn't matter where - the castle, some nearby moon, he'd even settle for going back to floating through space - anywhere but here.

The little window slid shut with a sound like scissors closing and the click of a latch. The sentries turned and marched back in the direction they came from, their synchronized footfalls echoed down the hallway until they disappeared from earshot. There was nothing left but the silence and darkness.

_You can kick, scream, punch, and swear all you want, but it won't do you any good. Because space is nothing._

Shiro looked up from his knees, staring at the small lines of light coming in from the seams of the door. He reached out purposelessly for the purple glow and found himself crawling towards it, like a wounded moth standing on the edge of a candle. It was there, he wanted to go towards it, but he knew he'd burn up if he tried.

His human hand brushed against the cold door; when he let his fingers ghost up the metal, he could feel all the scratches and pockmarks from the prisoners before him, terrified and trying to break free, like him. His ring finger brushed the jagged edge of a small gouge and the torn metal broke skin. The rivulet of blood that ran down between his knuckles was the warmest thing he'd felt since the heat of their battle with Zarkon.

The battle.

There was a hollow grief in his chest at the thought - certainly not for Zarkon, but for who precisely he couldn't tell. Maybe it was for the other Paladins, because the one person they relied on for leadership had vanished without a trace; maybe it was for Allura and Coran, because they had no home to return to now that they'd won; maybe it was for his Lion, because he'd left her when she needed him most.

Maybe it was for himself, because somehow he'd managed to wind up back in square one.

Shiro felt the back of his throat tighten and the backs of his eyes burned. He wanted to laugh at himself, at this massive clusterfuck of dramatic irony that somehow he'd managed to land in. He pressed his forehead against the metal, hoping that the cold against his skin would help keep him grounded. He forced himself to take a breath, but it turned into a squeaking hiccup as the last of his dignity fell away.

He dug his knees into the floor and slid down until he was kneeling in a ball on the floor, one hand still reaching up the door as if some impossible savior would come down and carry him away from this place. His half ragged breaths turned into whining sobs as all the tears that hadn't been cried in ages began to roll down the sides of his face. It almost felt gratifying to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd so mistakes are mine.
> 
> Hopefully I'll have chapter 2 up in a timely fashion.


	2. At the Bottom of a Hole He's Made

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow holy crap yall. This story took off faster than i expected. Thanks to everyone whose commented or left kudos, it makes my whole week and im loving that yall are loving it.
> 
> Anyway, here's chapter 2, as promised, in a timely fashion.
> 
> Shelby you are gift for all your help once again.

Six months.

That was how long it'd been since they'd lost Shiro.

No, not lost. _Disappeared_. Six months since he'd disappeared. Saying he was lost implied that he wouldn't come back, whereas saying he disappeared gave at least the slimmest chance that he might. Right now, they all needed that slim chance.

The first couple of weeks, everyone had run around like a chicken without a head. Ironically, that was the easiest it had been. The long nights where everyone had gathered on the bridge to throw ideas and conspiracy theories around like pachinko balls, the racing from one galaxy to another with all the BLIP sensors on their highest sensitivities, the Black Lion growling mournfully in her hangar like a mother who'd lost a child.

Perhaps it was easy then because they were all still at least somewhat optimistic, still thriving off sliver after sliver of hope. Even without Shiro's occasional motivational speeches and stirring words of action, the six remaining members of Team Voltron were still in a glass-half-full situation.

Unfortunately, if not unsurprisingly, it was Keith who began the slow chipping away at the hopeful façade. Though, not purposely.

When Shiro had all but declared him next in line as the leader of Voltron, Keith had initially brushed it off. They were in the middle of nowhere trying to stay alive, Shiro was in pain, and Keith assumed he'd been rambling on deliriously. He hadn't taken it seriously, he ignored the sincerity of the words and their implication, he told Shiro that it wasn't necessary. Keith couldn't even effectively lead himself, let alone the Paladins of Voltron. He didn't know how to think like a leader, he didn't know how to act like a leader.

That's what Shiro was for.

Keith's short temper and occasional brazenness hadn't helped his situation. He snapped at the others more often than any of them deserved. Something small and seemingly insubstantial would happen - Lance's ill-timed jokes, one of their sensors would short out, a delay in getting to their next destination - and he would snap like a too-tight rubber band. Keith wouldn't hesitate to drill the nearest person through the floor on a meaningless tirade before stalking off the bridge and locking himself in Red's hangar for the next few hours, trying to calm his searing nerves.

Aside from the bridge or his own room, his Lion's hangar was the only other place on the Castleship he was likely to be. The bond between them had grown exponentially in recent months, and her company was the one he sought most often; Keith had no memories of his actual mother, but he liked to imagine that she behaved similarly to Red. When he was upset or agitated, she would slowly crawl her way into his mind and get him to vent his anger either verbally or psychically, and by the time she retreated back, he felt much calmer. He spent a lot of time in Red's hangar, and he was getting used to waking up curled in her pilot's seat after accidentally falling asleep in the cockpit.

Everywhere else held a sort of odd heartache that left him feeling the heavy loneliness of losing his family once again. He wasn't the only one, either. It was like the Castleship was a candle that someone had covered with a glass - the same glass that they had once loozed at as being half full. They were slowly choking, steadily losing the flame that held them together.

Shiro's seat on the bridge remained empty. It was treated like a sin that they'd all committed - no one spoke about it, no one looked at it, no one acknowledged it. It was a chair that had turned itself into a broken throne.

At first, Allura had declared that, because Shiro had named Keith as his successor, the duties of the Black Paladin had fallen to him. That was only two days after Shiro had disappeared, and it was as hard then as it was now to think about. Keith distinctly remembered accusing her of "throwing Shiro away" and asking, albeit very angrily, that "if it was so easy for her to go through Paladins, why doesn't she just pilot the Black Lion?"

The pit in Keith's chest grew every time he had to walk past the Black Lion's hangar. He could still feel her pain thrumming low in the back of his head like the onset of a migraine. Again, Allura had told him that it was another sign that he needed to take on the mantle that had been Shiro's - if he could feel the Lion's pain as his own, she was beginning to accept him...or something like that. That had stung the most.

He walked into Black's hangar feeling like an intruder. At least when he had piloted her before, there had been a good reason; their mutual desire to protect Shiro had driven them more or less together. The more he tried sympathizing with her, the more it felt like he was trying to console a stranger.

Keith stood in front of her, waiting for her to allow him into her cockpit, part of him almost wanting her to reject him. The Black Lion must have sensed his resistance towards the whole situation, and naturally she crouched down in front of him. Keith's stomach sank through to his feet as he carefully climbed into her cockpit.

Keith knew he didn't belong almost immediately. He ran a hand along the controls and over the back of the seat cautiously. He could feel the Lion watching him. She was judging him, critically picking apart his every reaction as though deciding whether or not she could tolerate this foreigner. She was beaten to the punch however; Keith had made the decision for her.

He turned on a heel and hurried out of Black and across the hangar at almost a jog. When he reached the door, he paused with one hand on the jamb and turned back to look at the Lion over his shoulder. She dipped her head at him in a small fraction of a nod that could have meant any number of things. Keith took it as a sign of mutual resignation and nodded back.

Keith never went back in the Black Lion's hangar after that. He was glad, at least, that Shiro had been wearing his armor when he'd disappeared. If Keith had been asked to put it on, he might have lost the last of his remaining sanity.

* * *

Keith walked onto the bridge with exhaustion rolling off him in thick waves. In the past five days, he'd gotten maybe seven hours of sleep. He awoke curled up in Red's pilot's seat for probably the hundredth time that morning, with a tight crick in his neck and the beginnings of a headache forming right behind his eyes. He shuffled back to his room for a shower and served himself a small plate of goo for breakfast, but it hadn't helped any.

When he walked onto the bridge, the room was devoid of any human (or Altean) interaction. He walked to his seat without saying even so much as a hello (although, considering he didn't receive any form of acknowledgement either, he brushed it off as being even).

"Anything new on the scanners?" Keith directed his question to no one in particular, and in turn received only vague answers. Pidge shrugged and took another bite from the plate of what appeared to be some kind of alien salad that was balancing on one of their armrests. Lance and Hunk both hummed, shook their heads, and waved passively.

Allura pursed her lips, but kept her attention on the screens in front of her. Coran, at least, looked up from his station and over his shoulder at Keith, but his expression wasn't promising. He shook his head slightly, and turned back to his display, "we haven't gotten anything yet. But I've been decreasing the parameters bit by bit."

Keith managed up a small, if not mildly awkward, smile and a curt nod. That had been the longest sentence spoken by any of them in almost twenty-four hours. "That's good. Lance, how's it coming with that lead in the Rylyona system?"

Lance, who was sitting sideways in his chair, feet dangling over one armrest and head hanging back off the other, pulled one of his screens closer, "same old, same old. There's a fighting pit on...Fly-chi...Flee-chi..Fly-see - anyway, there's a fighting pit on this planet, some guy keeps winning, and they're calling him a champion. The whole system looks like it's one big industrial district though. Trading port, factories, ship repair...entertainment."

Keith sat back in his chair and chewed the inside of his cheek. It was getting harder and harder to find good leads, and their search was rapidly becoming nothing more than a wild goose chase, if it hadn't already been. One would think that trying to find the Black Paladin of Voltron would be somewhat easy, or Haggar's champion, or even just another human.

It turned out to be quite the Herculean task. Half of the places they'd stopped to ask around had still believed Voltron to be a child's tale, some of them were still loyal to the Galra, and some of them flat out didn't care. It was one thing to wormhole thousands of light years away to find someone claiming they were the Black Paladin, even if they turned out to be a raving fanatic trying to claim glory - at least then they had something feasible. Now, however, they were zigzagging from system to system trying to chase down everyone with white hair and metal arms that could win fights.

"For the most part, it looks like just another run-of-the-mill trading system," Pidge added, stifling a yawn into the collar of their jacket as they continued scrolling disinterestedly through information feeds, "except that some of the businesses and the factories are Galra owned and operated. That's really the only important thing about the fighting arena, but the factory gets its own planet. According to this, it assembles fighter planes."

Allura turned to face her Paladins, and the steady onslaught of tension and stress was beginning to show on her face and weigh on her shoulders. Her tight expression made it clear that this would potentially be the last time they dropped everything to chase down a rumor.

She crossed her hands in front of her as a calculated way of warning her audience that her next words had been chosen carefully, but not gently, "it will take us a little under two quintants to reach the Rylyona system. If we reach _Flyxi_ and we do not find Shiro there, then it may be time to accept that he is gone. At that point, we will need to begin the search for a new Red Paladin."

Though she spoke to the whole room, Keith knew that the last part was aimed at him. He hated it, but he knew Allura was right, in a passive aggressive sort of way. He never dreamed of piloting any Lion other than Red (the Black Lion seemed to agree with him on that point), but he also knew that one could not be a leader if they were an arm.

It made Keith bristle like he'd fallen into a thorn bush, but he heard Shiro's voice in the back of his head saying something poetic and philosophical, like: "you can't lead a team hanging out off to the side. You have to be in the center to hold them together".

Keith sat forward in his chair and put his elbows on his knees, steepling his fingers, and resting his chin on the knuckles of his thumbs. The way he looked at their situation, they had two options. They could realize sooner rather than later that Shiro was probably dead, save themselves an extra few days of meaningless fighting, and carry on with more pressing issues; or they could delay the inevitable, go in guns blazing one last time, get their hopes up, only to be let down when they realize that Shiro _was probably dead_ , and then move on.

The former was the smartest choice, but the latter was the stupidest.

"Okay," Keith began, with all the finality of someone who'd made a very bad decision they had no intention of changing, "we'll go check out the arena on Flyxi. If we can't find Shiro, then..." He let out a short sigh thought his nose and shrugged defeatedly, "then Allura's right."

A heavy silence hung around the bridge, like the last clouds after a storm; the atmosphere was so think it felt as though it had a heartbeat. Keith didn't want to bury Shiro again - none of them did - but it was like his father had said once: sometimes, you have to bury what you can't climb over.

"Then it's been settled," Allura pulled up a screen and entered the coordinates for the Rylyona system, her hands poised above her control pillars as another wormhole opened in front of the Castleship, "we'll give this one last chance."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm working on chapter 3 as we speak, so cross all the fingers that i can keep up with myself


	3. Still Sweating from the Rush

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well okay i have good news and bad news. Good news: new chapter! Bad news: i had to split up the chapter that i originally had planned, otherwise it would have been crazy long. But, i guess thats not really bad per se, bc theres more chapters. And hey, so far im keeping up with this regularly-ish scheduled posting, so thats also good
> 
> And kudos to Shelby, who puts up with my random writer rants and who is literally the most supportive writer buddy ever.
> 
>  
> 
> EDITTED: wouldnt you know, In my haste to post this i got the chapter titles switched around. Its fixed now

Nadarè was a dwarf planet whose terrain was mostly a dry and rocky desert - the surface was barren except for the occasional dry shrub or dead tree. It was the fifth planet from its system's two suns, but even as far away as it was, the surface of the planet rarely dipped below a dry desert heat. Oddly enough however, there was a constant overcast. It seemed a completely picturesque location for a massive Galra factory.

The factory was one of many that assembled the flying fighter drones, and the facility was organized meticulously. One section handled the assembly of the outer frame, a second section put together the engine, thrusters, and other mechanics, another was in charge of all the technical systems, and the final section put it all together. The whole site was the size of a small town, not counting the prison complex or the docking port further away for shipments.

The prison complex itself was kept apart from the main factory - separated by a ten minute walk through a barbed wire cattle crawl and three heavy gates. It was a small step up from some of the other prisons, though not by a lot. There were four prisoners to a cell rather than seven or more, and the cells were large enough that each prisoner got a bunk (or rather, a slab extending from the wall with a thin blanket and a slightly softer slab for a pillow). The cells were stacked six high and six across on three sides with grated catwalks weaving throughout the open middle for the guards. It wasn't a paradise - not by a hundred miles - but no one complained.

The overseers, unfortunately, tended to be a different story. Since the factory produced military forces, the quotas were kept high and the hours kept long. They walked around with their hands around the grips of their batons, itching for the opportunity to pull someone down from the line and beat them for something they may or may not have done wrong. Though breaks for meals and restrooms were already incredibly shortened, the overseers still rushed everyone through them.

The warden was all that and amplified. She was a bull of a woman, tall and broad and just as mean as any of her male counterparts. She made rounds throughout the different sections everyday like clockwork, staring over shoulders and breathing down necks as though she would have rather done the work herself. She'd never given a name or title to address her by, but the other prisoners in the camp called her "Ashrak", which meant "tyrant with sharp eyes" in Galra (more alarming than the actual name was the fact that she never argued against it).

While harassing the prisoners seemed to be a favorite pastime, regardless of the time, Ashrak seemed to have some sadistic love for the morning. She thundered along the catwalks, banging her baton against the bars as she hurried down the lines, rousing her workforce with all the grace of an elephant in a china shop.

"Get up! Now! All of you on your feet!" As she came to the end of a row, she threw the lever that controlled the door locks. Each door on that level slid open in perfect unison. "I want every one of you at attention in the next five ticks or rations get cut again!"

The lower levels scrambled to get out of their bunks and into their lines as the next floor began to hasten themselves awake. The prisoners on the upper levels were always the envy of the wake up call - since Ashrak and her small troop of sentries had to work from the bottom floor up, they got a few more minutes of extra sleep.

Despite the small luxury that karma had finally decided to throw at him, Shiro found himself woefully underutilizing it. The moment the first boot heel slammed against the grates, he was wide awake and standing in the center of his cell expectantly, still unaccustomed to the laxness of the camp. A muscle in his shoulder was still sore and twitching from yesterday's work, and he couldn't wait until it was Block 5's turn in the showers.

The warden rounded the corner of their row, continuing through until she came to number fifty-seven, where she slowed to a stop. Ashrak turned her head a fraction of a degree to look through the bars, and she let one corner of her lips curl up in an almost amused smirk. She looked at Shiro from the corner of her eyes, "do you think that getting up a whole thirty ticks before everyone else is going to get you some kind of reward?"

Shiro bristled at her question. Had he been smart, he would have shook his head and looked at the floor until the door opened, but the way her hand was resting around the grip of her baton made his palm itch. He gave her a simple, "no, ma'am," and hoped she would leave it at that.

Instead, Ashrak let out a sharp laugh and fully turned to face him, "it's been a long time since anyone's called me by a formality. Let alone a prisoner. Is Haggar's former Champion giving me attitude before breakfast?"

Shiro blinked and moved his eyes up from the warden's belt to look her in the eyes, something considered by many in the prison to be an act of defiance. He hadn't planned on being some amazing rebel leader, but he found a shred of satisfaction in how unnerved Ashrak looked when he did, "no, ma'am."

A small wave of murmurs went through the prison in a wave. Ashrak's lips drew themselves back into two thin lines and her eyes narrowed derisively, "you think you're funny then? Or are you trying to be some kind of hero?"

Shiro opened his mouth to answer her again, but instead her pursed lips turned into a snarl and she grabbed the bars with enough force to rattle the whole cell. The other three in the cell retreated to a back corner, but Shiro - with the warden's claws barely a couple inches from his face - didn't flinch.

Ashrak tightened her grip on the metal and continued her enraged growling for another few seconds, but Shiro remained unfazed. She searched him with a feral look for any sign of falter, but realized that her display was failing when she found none. Displeased with Shiro's lack of reaction, she let go of the door and returned to her place in front of her sentries, her hard face falling backing out its usual scowl.

She continued on down the catwalk as though nothing had happened, banging her baton along the bars of the cell doors like always. The sharp tapping of her heels on the metal came to a stop before the release lever with the rusted hinges that squealed when she pulled it. The short monotone buzzer rang for a few seconds as all the doors on the row slid open, the cells' inhabitants dragging their feet as they stood in single file line facing the stairs.

The warden began her brisk, methodical inspection of the prisoners, running her eyes up and down each of them as she walked down the lines and for the stairs. In the back of Shiro's row, someone's shoulder stuck a few inches out too far; Ashrak pulled out her baton and pressed the tip of it into their shoulder until it pushed them back in line.

"Apparently, some of the newer workers here think that they can stand up to their superiors," she walked down one of the staircases to the bottom floor, keeping her words metered to her footfalls, "and they think that, because a small group of untrained and so-called Paladins are out there opposing our great Emperor, they can rebel freely and easily."

The other Galra guards shifted on their feet, clasped their hands around their backs, or nodded in agreement. One of them smirked haughtily, like he was listening to a speech at a rally, rather than a prison warden ranting about a minor infraction from one lone prisoner.

Ashrak reached the bottom level and walked out into the middle of the floor, raising her voice so that it carried through the open space, "so you all can thank number 117-9875," she looked up over her shoulder at the higher levels, finding Shiro easily and flashing him another one-sided, self satisfied smile, "for the loss of your morning rations today! He is _quite_ the champion, isn't he?"

There was a collective groan among the prisoners, at least two of them shouting some profanity in an alien language. Shiro kept his eyes on the floor in front of him, trying to let himself slip back into the crowd as much as possible. Someone behind him poked him in the side with some type of quill and hissed something that sounded obscene.

"Move out! Now!"

The main door at the front of the prison made a sound like nails on a chalkboard as it was hauled open, the outside heat rolling into the building in thick waves. Row after row of black and purple uniforms marched across the catwalks and down the stairs, filing out of the door and out onto the fenced road that led up to the factory.

The workday had begun.

* * *

Keith's eye was twitching again. He didn't know when it had started, but it was back now. He'd been at his wits end for a while, but this was the actual final straw. They either found Shiro today, or they laid his memory to rest. The rest of the team was beginning to grasp the gravity of what that meant, and the atmosphere throughout Castleship had been the most somber the last few hours that it had been in the last few months.

Allura opened a wormhole that would drop them off at the edge of the Rylyona system, close enough to Flyxi that they could fly in with as little resistance as could be expected, but far enough away that an enire trading district wouldn't see the Voltron Lions suddenly dropping into their atmosphere. The journey didn't feel like the two days it had taken; it was on odd mix between feeling like another lifetime, or feeling like a very quick blink.

Keith was the last of the Paladins to walk into the armory. He had been lost in thought in his seat on the bridge, slouched down in his chair and watching the edges of the vortex speed by on the viewscreens until Allura had startled him back to reality. They would be in Rylyona in a few minutes, and he should go prepare with the rest of the team (the curtness of her tone meant that it was not a suggestion).

He walked through the armory doors, keeping his eyes on his locker as he walked past everyone else. Shiro's locker was the closest to his, and his fingers hesitated over the keypad when he though of someone else having to occupy that space. The first time they'd changed into their armor together, Shiro pinched Keith's bicep and gave him a small laugh - "so you _have_ been hiding some muscle under there". No one could replace that.

Keith opened his locker and changed into his armor as fast as he could, debating whether or not he should go talk to the Black Lion one last time before they had to tell her that her Paladin was dead. After all the effort she'd put into bonding with Shiro, now she'd either be forced together with Keith, or with someone new. Maybe if he told all this to Red, she could pass it on to Black like forwarding a text message. If the Lions could even do that.

"Hey, Keith?"

It took Keith a moment to come back to reality (for the second time that day), he'd been so busy rambling off one thought after another that somehow he'd manage to freeze halfway through putting on his boots and cuisses. He looked to his left, at where the other three Paladins had gathered around him.

Pidge was standing halfway behind Hunk, holding their helmet in their hands and rubbing at a smudge on the visor with their pinky. Meanwhile Hunk was looking back and forth between Keith and the floor, rocking on his feet with his hands clasped behind his back. Lance had been the one to speak up, and he stood a step or two ahead of the others, the closest to Keith, with one hand on his hip and the other hand rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.

Keith put down his breastplate and crossed his arms across his chest, more out of hesitancy than attitude, as he turned to face the team. The recent lack of interaction hadn't made him any less trusting of them, but suddenly he felt uncomfortably vulnerable standing there in only half his armor.

Lance was staring off at a corner just over Keith's head, waiting for some kind of prompting to continue whatever he'd planned to say. Keith shifted his weight from one foot to the other and gave the other Paladin a simple, "what's up?" - although, it came out quieter than he had anticipated.

"What happened with Shiro really sucked, and we all really miss him. And it would be super amazing if we roll up to this planet and he's just sitting there in a deck chair and sunglasses, sipping on some piña colada - " Hunk nudged Lance's arm with his elbow to get him back on track, " - but, since that probably _isn't_ gonna happen... I guess what I'm trying to say is..."

Lance pulled a corner of his lip between his teeth and took a breath through his nose. This wasn't intended to be a pep talk, he didn't quite know what it was turning into, but whatever is was, he found himself at a block. He swallowed, took a step closer to Keith, and - despite the fact that the Red Paladin took half a step back from him - he put a hand on Keith's shoulder. The muscles beneath his hand tensed, and Keith looked more than a little confused.

"We're all still torn up about Shiro, and no one's ever gonna replace him. But if Voltron is really gonna get a new Black Paladin...then I'm really glad it's you."

The statement came so unexpectedly that Keith almost had to ask Lance to repeat himself. Instead, he looked back and forth between the other three, expecting one of them to call "ha, psych!" even though he knew they never would. In hindsight, he should have known better; even if they hadn't been a team in a while, they were still family.

Keith still found himself completely speechless as the hand on his shoulder turned into an arm, and then a second arm around his other shoulder. Before he could even blink, he was pressing his face into the collar on Lance's armor and hugging himself around Lance's middle. Pidge sidestepped around Hunk and put their arms around Keith's middle, and finally Hunk simply threw his arms around all three of them.

Unnecessary displays of affection had never suited Keith - especially ones involving more than one other person. But if this was possibly going to be the last time he joined them as a friend rather than a leader, then he was more than happy to accept a group hug. Under any other circumstances, he may have stayed there longer.

"Paladins," Allura's voice came over the speakers, and any semblance of a bonding moment they had all been having was gone, "we will be entering the Rylyona system any moment now. Please report to the bridge."

The announcement clicked off, and the four of them withdrew from their hug. Hunk and Pidge walked out of the armory, throwing a last glance the smallest of smiles over their shoulders before disappearing through the door. Lance was second to leave, although his hand lingered on Keith's shoulder for another few seconds. He eventually picked his helmet up off the bench and gave Keith a tired smile that seemed to say both "let's give this one last try" and "I hope we find him", like he was humoring their final efforts but still hoping for unrealistic results. He, too, left in silence.

Keith hastily finished putting on the last of his armor and hurried up to the bridge, taking his place in his seat silently. He tapped his heel against the floor impatiently, as though it might somehow make them come out of the wormhole any faster. Regardless of his anxious tapping, the Castleship broke through the wormhole after another minute or so. There was the implication that there would be a sigh of relief, but it never happened.

Allura highlighted one of the larger planets in the system and zoomed in on the main screens. There were several docking ports on the side facing them alone, and the space around the planet was clotted with ships of all shapes and sizes - unsurprisingly, most bore Galra identification. The surface of the planet itself looked like one large city ("So...Coruscant?" Lance mused, but only Pidge and Hunk got the reference), and it was significantly more developed than any of the other planets in its system.

"That," Allura motioned at the screen, "is Flyxi. It will be difficult to sneak in without being noticed, but the amount of ships in the air should provide some cover from any attacking Galra."

There was an open, bright spot in the center of all the ports and lighted buildings. It was a massive arena, like someone had squished together two football stadiums into a gigantic square. It became increasingly obvious what it was, even if no one said it. Coran zoomed in on the space, and several information feeds sprouted up on either side of the main screen.

"If Shiro is here, then chances are, he'll be in there," Coran spoke up, as he turned to face the rest bridge and brought up a structural schematic of the arena. There were multiple layers of tunnels and catacombs under the already complex stadium, and it looked as if they wound around for miles, "assuming the Galra haven't changed the layouts of their arenas, then the prisoners are on the lowest levels, _aaaallllll_ the way down here."

Allura ignored the collective, defeated groan, and pulled the schematic onto one of the smaller screens in front of her. She rested one knuckle against her chin as she talked, delegating roles, "Lance and Hunk will provide covering fire closer to the planet's surface, while Coran and I - "

Out of nowhere, something slammed into the Castleship with enough force to almost knock them entirely off course. It kept bashing against the starboard side with the force of a small earthquake, and it threatened to send them reeling out into the open if it didn't let up in the next few seconds. Deep within the ship, there was something between an enraged roar and ripping metal, if they hadn't all known better, they would have said one of Haggar's robeasts was trying to claw its way out.

The only problem being that there weren't any Galra warships within firing range, nothing had come up on the proximity sensors, and the alarms had yet to begin blaring. Allura ordered the particle barrier up and she deployed the Castleship's main guns in preparation for an oncoming attack, though they remained alone at their current location.

"What keeps hitting us?" Keith barked as he shot up from his seat, one hand still firmly braced on the back of his chair.

"I don't know, there's nothing on the scanners!"

There was another slam and Allura was almost thrown onto the ground. Another few seconds, and another few good hits into the hull, and a secondary screen shot up across the main screens, flashing red as the view from the camera shook with the repeated force of the impact. The camera was unmistakably in the Black Lion's hangar, although the view was slightly tilted to one side from being shaken. It was hard at first to tell what was happening, but it quickly became apparent.

The Black Lion was trying to break out of her hangar.

She ran up and down the length of the hangar, ramming into the main doors with her shoulders like a battering ram. When the door wouldn't budge, she turned and ran back down the length of her hangar and charged at the doors again. After the fourth or fifth attempt, she slowed to stop almost completely on the opposite end of the hangar and crouched in front of the doors like she planned to pounce on them. Her jaw opened wide and she fired a massive shot from her laser at the weakest point of the doors.

Allura brought a hand over her mouth and leaned against one of her control pillars in stunned shock, "this is impossible..."

The doors of the hangar blew off from the side of the ship with enough power to force the Castleship into a sort of lopsided fishtail. Black ran at the doors one last time and tore through the remaining fragments of the airlock as though they were merely confetti. Once she was free, she flew a loop around the bridge, either trying to get everyone's attention or to show off her sudden rebellion, and then went straight for the edge of the particle barrier. She tore off towards the outer edges of the system at breakneck speeds, bounding over debris and asteroids like they were insubstantial.

"Allura, what the hell was that?" Keith had to yell above the alarms, but received only a tiny, unnerved shake of the princess's head. He rounded on the other Paladins, standing straighter as the ship righted itself, "Pidge, where's she going?"

"Uhh..." A flurry of screens folded out in front of the Green Paladin as they frantically scrolled from one to the other, "it looks like she's headed for the planet with the factory on it!"

"Why is the Black Lion going for Nadarè?" Allura shouted, though it was directed more towards herself. She shook herself out of her daze and pulled her display back in front of her, rapidly trying to seal off the damaged hangar.

For a long moment, the bridge was silent except for the alarms. It took at least a minute for the initial shock to drain out of the room. There were a hundred emotions spiraling together at once, and the adrenaline was slow to kick in. The actual fact that the Black Lion had gone rogue was less important than the reason why she had done it. They didn't have all day to sit around through ideas back and forth like they had in the past; they were here to do their job, not chase after a berserk Lion.

No.

Chasing after a berserk Lion _was_ the reason.

There was a fraction of a second where everything seemed to happen at once. The biggest realization of all dawned on the entire bridge like a sunrise after an endless night. Six months of baited breath, harrowing disappointment, and purposely subdued mourning had all, in less than a heartbeat, seemed suddenly so worth it.

Everyone on the bridge screamed one word in perfect unison.

_"Shiro!"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i literally wrote the entire climax of this chapter at 1-2 in the morning when I was subsisting off goldfish and like two sips of water so i may go back and edit it later, but I also really wanted to get it posted so
> 
> Lances joke about Shiro chillin with the piña colada comes from [this tumblr post](http://heero-yuy.tumblr.com/post/156552024070/meru90-tbh-he-deserves-a-break)
> 
> The next chapter is gonna have some action and I'm really slow at writing action so, just chill hanging off this cliff for a while I guess


	4. His Body Tense, His Hands They Shake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the longer wait, but like i said, im literally a snail at writing action stuff. And ive been splitting up chapters recently to keep the story bouncing along, but this one didnt have any good cutting points so....long chapter! And i took some liberties with perspectives in here so it alternates a little, but it should be too crazy
> 
> Another fair heads up: I'm going on vacation this week (whoop whoop) so I'll try and get as much work done on this as I can, but it might be another late update.

Shiro remembered his first job like he was still there. He'd been a first year in high school and the fast food restaurant three blocks away had an opening for a fry cook on weekends. He remembered waking up every Saturday and Sunday for the first couple of weeks and being excited to go in, and then slowly coming to dislike his job. He hated walking home smelling like fry oil and his arms stinging from the jumping grease, and the first time his manager told him to wash out the grease trap, he gagged. But he got a free soda and four-pack of chicken nuggets whenever he wanted, so it wasn't entirely horrible.

That seemed like it had been a hundred lifetimes ago, and this was not his first job.

Upon arrival at the camp, the prisoners were assigned to the various sectors based on their physical build and what the guards had called "quality of ethics" - which simply meant that all the prisoners who looked the least likely to revolt were given the jobs with the most tools. There hadn't been any sort of tutorial on what anyone was supposed to be doing, so the only way to learn how to do anything had been to watch the others.

It was a horribly flawed system to say the least, that left people like Aani (one of Shiro's cell mates; she looked somewhat like a cross between a wasp and a polar bear. Her species had no eyes and relied on sensing thermal signals, like snakes) working in the overly hot, stuffy hangar that welded together the wings for the fighters. Or had Shiro, who had a minor in engineering and received secondary engineer training at the Garrison, placed at a small table assembling the array for the targeting systems - something that Pidge could do in five minutes tops, but took him almost fifteen on a good day.

Ironically enough, he had ended up on the floor that installed the engines when he first arrived. The overseer of that sector had been ecstatic that he'd received someone who actually knew what they were doing, and he made a point of using Shiro as an example whenever he could. That sector - which was usually the one that lagged behind the most - was suddenly producing above the quotas time and time again.  
  
Even Ashrak seemed mildly pleased.

But, yet again, Shiro had tried to do the right thing and ended up screwing himself over. One of the other workers had gotten his arm caught between the engine block and a section of the hull, and one of the guards was joking (a little too seriously) about just cutting if off if it was that stuck. In hindsight however, it was probably Shiro shoving the guard off the scaffolding that had gotten him reassigned, rather than actually saving someone. Although, his overseer wasn't pleased that Shiro disassembled part of the engine to get the other prisoner free and production had been set back at least an hour. It was taken out of the already short sleep schedule and in the morning, both Shiro and the other prisoner were assigned to different sectors.

Here, it seemed that Ashrak was always hovering behind him, especially because it was the closest to the guard's security booth. Even though she didn't know the first thing about assembling targeting arrays (in all fairness, neither did Shiro), she had a penchant for glaring down at him and criticizing him. That didn't look as complete as some of the other ones, he should check his soldering work again to make sure it will stay, and why was he always so slow?

The corner of Shiro's eye twitched and he wanted to snap at her like he had at Slav, but after this morning, he figured that it would be better to keep his mouth shut this time. Obediently, he set down the circuit board he was working on and picked up the one that he had just finished. He picked up his soldering pen again and Ashrak harrumphed behind him.

"If you'd done it correctly the first time, then you wouldn't have to go back and fix it," she scoffed, running an eye down the room at the other workers, "it's a shame you had to go and throw off my whole production schedule. When you were down in the hangar, we were at the highest output we'd been at in a long time."

Shiro's hand slowed over his work, the tip of the pen hovering a few centimeters from what he'd been about to solder. His human hand had been holding the circuit board, and his grip tightened fractionally around the metal, just enough so that a muscle on the back of his hand began to bulge slightly. He knew that any punishment he received here wouldn't be anything as sever as what he'd received in the arena, but he also knew that the guards were perfectly willing to beat their charges within an inch of their life as long, so they could still march into work the next day.

Ashrak must have noticed his irritation. She leaned down until she was level with the side of Shiro's face, one of her eyebrows arched and a haughty smirk on her lips, "something you'd care to add? I'd think about my next words, if I were you."

She threw a glance across the room at the other workers, all of them shooting Shiro warning glances in between their work. It was still a couple more hours until afternoon rations were passed out, and he'd come to learn that camaraderie in Galra prisons only lasted as long as the food did. People became less and less trusting when one took away the only thing they looked forward to, and as of today, Shiro knew he would be lucky not to get himself shanked before lights out.

Behind him, Ashrak tapped one of her clawlike nails against the handle of her baton, and he knew she was daring him to step out of line just the tiniest bit.

Shiro never once took his eyes off his hands and silently continued working as though nothing had happened. Ashrak remained unmoved for several seconds, still watching him for any signs of retaliation. When she was satisfied enough with his complacency, she stood straight and went back to looming over the rest of the workers.

"That's what I thought," she huffed, pleased with herself. Though she had seemed to lose interest in Shiro, the other workers were still eyeing the both of them skeptically, waiting for something to happen. Ashrak immediately noticed the lapse in production; she slammed her hand down on a workbench hard enough to knock several tools onto the floor and send the prisoner sitting there reeling back in their chair, "everyone get back to work! This isn't a vacation home! And pick those up!"

The prisoner scrambled to pick up their things as the rest of the room hunched back over their stations. The door of the security booth slid open and one of guards hurried out fast enough to clip his shoulder on the half-open door. He crossed the catwalk at almost a jog and took the stairs two at a time. Ashrak turned to her lieutenant as he hustled between the rows of workers, in such a hurry that he only half saluted her as he leaned in close.

Shiro didn't speak Galra, nor could he hear their conversation at anything above a terse whisper. He did, however, recognize the minor flash of fear that crossed her face - even if it was for half a second. He watched out of the corner of his eye as she gave orders to the other officer, at the look of hesitation he gave her, and at the way she snapped something at him harsh enough to send him running back up to the other guards.

Ashrak turned sharply on her heel and stormed through the rows of tables for the door, throwing it open and letting it slam shut on it's own behind her. Through the windows along the wall, he watched her walk across the factory with an almost murderous intent about her, literally shoving guards and sentries out of her way if they didn't move fast enough.

Something was very wrong if it had Ashrak as concerned as she was. From a door in the back of the workroom, a small group of sentries filed in and stood in the corners of the room, a silent replacement after their warden's abrupt leave. One of them turned its head towards Shiro, telling him in that monotone, robotic voice to return to his work.

He picked up a fresh circuit board and the soldering pen and went back to what he'd been doing. Although he found it hard to ignore the faint purring that had started up in the back of his mind.

* * *

Immediately, the bridge became a mad scramble. Allura had spun the Castleship around in a complete one-eighty and had every weapons system armed and ready; Coran had the shield up in a matter of seconds and the engines on full burn to cross the system. The Paladins sprinted for the elevators to their hangars as though the ground was falling out beneath them, and the ride down felt so slow they may as well have been walking through molasses.

For all the effort Keith put towards getting to his Lion as fast as he could, he found himself pausing just before the door to the cockpit. He put a hand on one of her canines and looked out over the edge of her jaw, at the wall that separated the Red and Black Lions' hangars. If he listened hard enough, he could hear the whistling of the air still leaking out around the hastily sealed hole, where Black had clawed her way out.

He could feel Red vibrate under his hand, and he could hear her pulsing in the back of his mind. They both shared the same twisting emotions: the relief that they were so close to saving their leader, the fear that maybe all their hard work would be for nothing if they failed, the anger that it had taken the this long.

Lance's voice cut in from the helmet in Keith's hands asking where he was, and he reminded himself that now was not the time to dwell on feelings. He slipped the helmet on his head and continued inside his Lion. When the dashboard came to life, there were four audio and visual feeds off to the far right, where Keith had moved the screens out of the way so they wouldn't be a distraction. There was Pidge, already into a debriefing about the factory, and Lance and Hunk, who were both torn between listening to Pidge and actually getting out into the fight.

Then there was the little black square in the corner, with some red message in Altean blinking intermittently. It had been there for months; there was no reason to communicate with an empty chair, nor with the bayard that remained unmoved from its slot after all this time, and so the Black Lion had shut off her comms.

Pidge was already a few minutes into a briefing about the layout of the complex, and the schematic they were using was of the exterior structure only. Keith turned his attention to the map that had appeared in the corner of his screen. Poorly animated gun turrets and generic flying squares were illustrating the amount of resistance they'd be facing.

Keith tapped a finger against his joysticks and studied the layout like it was a chessboard (he'd never actually been any good at chess, though). Even after only watching the model for a couple minutes, he'd already picked up the pattern of fighters. It was a shit tactic that they'd studied in the Garrison, something so basic and predictable that it was rarely used outside of suicide missions or failures.

A fifth square appeared next to Pidge's channel. Allura had several tactical screens panned out around her, and on one of them she was placing colored dots on a grid, "Keith and Pidge will remain in the air to pick off any opposition. It will be up to - "

"No," Keith cut her off, rotating the image of the complex, "sorry, Allura, but I have a different approach."

Although everyone was looking at him in mixed surprise, none of them spoke out. Allura looked a little ruffled at having her words shot down so immediately, but she remained silent with the others. When it was clear that all the attention was now on him, Keith continued.

"I don't think the prison has any serious security. It looks like it's all drones and automatic turrets, so if we can take them out fast enough, they won't be a threat. See how the fighters in the air are spiraling? The Yellow Lion is big enough to go right up through the center and - "

"Like the double helix maneuver from Mr. Thompson's class!" Hunk's face lit up; him, Lance, and Pidge all sharing similar looks of recognition, "unwind and unzip it!"

"Exactly. You open up the middle, and then Lance and the Black Lion can take out the sides," he moved the display from the surrounding area to the prison itself, "while Pidge and I break in. That way they can hack any security measures and I can get us through any ID scans."

There was a collective nod amongst the Paladins, and even Allura - with her head cocked to one side and her finger on her chin - seemed impressed with his thinking. She had a look on her face that wasn't quite an 'I told you so', but the way she aimed it at Keith said it anyways. It reminded him of the way Shiro looked at him whenever Keith had proven him pleasantly wrong.

"Coran and I will provide as much extra support as we can with the Castle," Allura closed her eyes for a brief second and exhaled. When she spoke again, her words carried the weight of every second of the past months, "we wish you all success."

Allura's channel closed, and the Lions' hangar doors could not open fast enough. The Red Lion bounded out of her hangar and into the fray of blaster fire and flying debris. Behind her, the Blue, Yellow, and Green Lions followed in a tight V, with the Black Lion darting across the sky in front of them.

It was strange to see her fighting without someone behind the controls, but she was doing it so effortlessly that it looked like she'd been flying solo her whole life. In the absence of her pilot, she seemed to become her own Paladin. It was easy to see where she and Shiro had begun to share tastes: she hadn't used her cannons once, instead favoring her jaw blade and claws like the predator that she was.

A fresh squadron of Galra fighters came around from the darker side of Nadarè; they hadn't even noticed the other Paladins, and opened fire on the Black Lion the moment she was in range. They broke formation in an attempt to surround her as soon as she rounded on them, but she moved too fast for the drones to react.

The wings on her back raised and, in a bright flash, the laser-like feathers extended behind her. She pounced on them as naturally as if she were on the ground, and in one single strike, she sliced through her oncoming attackers like a hot knife through butter. Like it was only a plaything, she used one of the wrecked hulls as a stepping stone and pushed off it with her hind legs.

The Black Lion circled around in front of the other Lions, showing off her lead in the charge. Keith could feel both her and Red roaring proudly in the back of his mind, sharing an agreement to decimate the enemy in their siege. Black's presence swooped out of his mind as she dove down to search for more fighters. Keith's hands flexed around his controls and he heard his Lion's voice just behind his ears: _Find her Paladin_.

"Guys, I think that's our cue!"

Keith and Pidge took off towards Nadarè while Lance and Hunk followed after the Black Lion. Most of the Galra forces were concentrated in the air and there seemed to be an over abundance of fighter drones. A command ship had yet to show up, but the planet was so far away from the rest of system that one wasn't likely to. There were only so many attack patterns that came with basic programming, and they were all simplistic.

The prison's gun turrets had locked on to the Red and Green Lions once they'd entered the atmosphere, and the long range canons launched mortar shells in the spaces between the laser fire. A siren tower in the center of the factory's roof began to blare with the same volume and sound of the tornado sirens near the Garrison headquarters.

Pidge turned on their cloaking device and the lasers almost immediately lost the lock on them. There was a moment where the guns stalled entirely to recalibrate, and when they came back online seconds later, they were all trained on the Red Lion. Keith zigzagged through the air as best he could, trying to return fire whether he had a clear shot or not.

A stray shot his Red on the hindquarters, and she growled in irritation. She looped around in a tight turn and flew headfirst for the turrets. Keith tugged back on one of the joysticks and the energy canon materialized on Red's back. She let out annoyed roar and fired a single shot at the center of the main turret, reducing it to a small explosion and a rooftop of burnt and twisted metal.

"Don't get too crazy with the lasers," Pidge tried not to sound like they were chastising Keith, although he didn't miss the concern in their voice. He knew why, and didn't blame them when they added, "we don't know where any prisoners are."

"The outer defenses are down," Keith dove down until he was flying low enough to avoid any radar, "we can land behind the factory and sneak in through the loading dock. From there our first priority is to get to the main control room."

"Yeah. Roger that."

The Green Lion fell in line behind Red as they circled around the outer perimeter of the compound.

* * *

The prison was absolute chaos. Not the usual, organized chaos that came from managing hundreds of workers - no, actual chaos.

There were three alarms going off at the same time and an automated voice repeating the same sentence over and over again. The guards had completely abandoned the prisoners for the safety of the emergency bunker (the Galran oath of "victory of death" apparently only lasted as long as the guarantee of safety, it seemed) and the robotic sentries were still trying to maintain some semblance of order.

There weren't any riots so far, and there wasn't likely to be one anytime soon. The majority of prisoners were flocking towards the door that led back to the prison, but with no guards in the security booth, the door remained completely sealed. Several of the more heavyset workers had returned from the hangar with large pieces of metal crudely welded together into a makeshift battering ram, still glowing in places along the rough seams front where they'd been attached hastily.

Shiro had no desire to stand around and watch his coworkers try to pound their way through eight-inch-thick Galran steel. He ran up the nearest stairs and wove through the rush of prisoners like a salmon swimming upstream. He didn't have a perfect plan, but at least he had something.

If he could break into the main control room, he could unlock all the doors in the factory. All he really cared about was getting to the loading dock and getting in the first travel-ready ship, but if he had the opportunity to free everyone else, he wouldn't pass it up. He wouldn't deny these people their escape, even if he wasn't the Black Paladin anymore.

The door to the security booth had been left partly open, and through the opening Shiro could see the screens flickering in and out of static. He slipped in silently, stepping across an overturned chair and brushing the remnants of a fallen ceiling tile off the keyboard. Half of the screens were either broken entirely or only transmitting static, but the few that were working were showing essentially the same thing: groups of prisoners running through the halls, trying to find a way out of the locked down building.

The only one that was different from the rest was the view of the loading dock, with the massive rolling door still sealed shut and a few transport ships still parked in their bays. After half a minute of staring at the unmoving image, Shiro was about to turn and leave the room when something on the video caught his eye.

A bead of light suddenly appeared on the far corner of the door. It was too solid to simply be a flicker of the lens, and the way it wiggled back and forth in place for a few seconds was vaguely familiar. But, as soon as it appeared, the little light slipped out of the door and disappeared.

Another second later, a larger something slipped in through the hole where the light had been. This one wasn't bright like the other light, but it was certainly more effective. It sliced down through the panels of the door like a knife through butter and hit the floor with a small burst of sparks. This new spot slipped out from the incision it had just made and took its place back at the top, sliding down the other side.

It struck Shiro a moment too late that someone was cutting a hole in the door, and he only realized that it was actually happening when the cut piece of metal was kicked in from the outside. The video was too grainy to positively identify who bas breaking in, but he hoped that whoever it was knew what they were getting into.

A pair of small, white figures ran in through the hole; one of them was carrying the sword that cut through the door, and the other had the little glowing dot that had made the first hole. The smallest of the two intruders held their hand to their side and the weapon they were holding disappeared somewhere between their belt and their leg. Something flashed up on their wrist, a glowing screen of their own that their hand was frantically flying across.

Shiro squinted at the screen. The wrist mounted screen, the sword, and something about the two of them reminded him of -

"Keith! Pidge!"

He pressed his forehead to the cracked glass of the screen, feeling like if he didn't then he'd crumple to the floor. He'd spent so many sleepless nights pleading with whatever space-deity existed this far away from Earth for some kind of help. So many more nights had him jolting awake in bed, wondering if he'd ever really left the Galra to begin with, if he'd ever see his second family again.

And to find out that it hadn't all been worthless...

Shiro hadn't realized he'd begun to cry until he found himself hiccuping for breath. His metal hand grasped at the small screen, as though such a childish act would somehow bring them closer to him. His human hand came up to cover his mouth as he compressed his sobs to wheezes into his palm.

Outside, the other prisoners had begun their attempts at trying to break through the door that led back to the prison. The clanging thunder of metal on metal drew him back to the reality that he was still trapped here. Shiro drew in as deep a breath as he could and straightened himself, watching the last of Keith and Pidge as they ran down the bottom of the screen and out of the camera's view.

They wouldn't make it anywhere near the interior of the factory if he didn't disable the security measures. If he wanted to help them - and by extension, himself - he would still have to make it down to the control room.

Shiro turned on a heel and ran out of the security booth, not surprised that nothing had changed on the floors below. Sentries scattered the floor, every one in a different state of wreckage. He almost tripped over one of them: there was a gigantic gash going through its abdomen, and the bust had almost completely unhinged from the rest of it's body. The rent metal buckled outward in a way that gave Shiro an uncomfortable memory of the carnage in the arena, and the precision of the cut screamed claws.

He swallowed and continued on, following the trail of littered husks and fallen pieces of the building's interior. Truth be told, he really had no idea where he was going, but there were only so many doors he could try before he found what he was looking for.

A pair of sentries lay deactivated on the floor, having slipped down from their position guarding the last door at the end of the hall. A piece of the doorframe had been bent inward by the partial collapse of the ceiling, and the door remained jammed open. The purple glow from the display screens spilled out into the dark hallway, and the angry voice yelling inside the room only added to the already disturbing atmosphere.

As Shiro slowed from a run to a cautious tiptoeing, he strained against the other noises of the prison trying to hear the conversation in the room.

There were two people arguing, one of them he immediately recognized as Ashrak. The other person was a more masculine looking, scaly Galra sitting in what looked like an office building. He looked vaguely stressed, but most irate as he sat back in his chair, arms crossed, and shrugged. Ashrak snapped at him in the Galran language and pounded her fist against the keyboard, but who she was talking to hardly flinched.

"I have the Voltron Lions blowing up my factory! Your factory!" She raged, pointing angrily at the floor and baring her teeth, "and you _shkerags_ on Flyxi don't give a damn?"

"I haven't received any reports of Voltron or an Altean ship entering the system in the last fourty-eight vagas," he leaned forward in his seat, pulling up a smaller screen off to the side and swiping through various windows, "there were some Zaskian pirates in the system a while back, are you - "

"I think I can tell the difference between Voltron and pirates! Of all the worthless command centers - if you aren't going to send me any reinforcements, then I'm abandoning this forsaken planet!"

"This is out of my jurisdiction, Kres! What do you want me - "

A large explosion in one of the closer sectors rocked the building, knocking Ashrak - or Kres, or whoever - off her feet. Another chunk of ceiling fell down onto the monitor, cutting off the video, and the unsuccessful conversation. Ashrak picked herself up off the floor with a growl, leaning on the edge of the destroyed computer as she stood.

Shiro saw the brief opportunity he'd been given, and seized it the only way he knew how. From his place in the doorway, his Galra arm flickered to life at his side. The purple energy felt strange after months of disuse, like his hand had fallen asleep and the blood was slowly returning. The familiar glow in the corner of his eye was a welcome light in the dark room, and the faint humming of the hand was like hearing an old song again.

Ashrak snapped her head to the side, glaring at him in the dark light. Her claws flexed at her sides and the way she shifted her weight around gave away that she was about to charge at him. They stepped in a circle around the room, keeping their distance from one another but never letting their guards drop. It was the perfect gladiatorial match, and the crowd would be on the edge of their seats if they were in the arenas.

" _You_ ," she snarled, her bright eyes reflecting the light from Shiro's hand, "I knew I should have gotten rid of you a long lime ago! I should have let that slaver pawn you off on some other worthless rock!"

Shiro raised his hand until he was holding it level with his chest, keeping his hand straight if he had to either block or attack, "then my team would have just found me there too. You can't force a Lion from her Paladin."

Ashrak growled at him like a feral dog and lunged across the room at him. She was larger and bulkier than he was, and it only took her about two good strides to get within swinging distance of Shiro.

She wasn't using any weapons - even her beloved baton remained clipped to her belt. Her thick fist flew at Shiro's head like dumbbell, but he threw his flesh arm up to block it. For a moment, they held their positions firmly, but Ashrak leaned all her weight into her arm and Shiro couldn't hold the block any longer.

Her hand went straight for his neck and wrapped around it as easy as a child grabbing a rag doll. She slammed him down onto the floor and took a knee next to his head, holding him there by his neck. Shiro wriggled beneath her, but Ashrak had a hundred pound on him easily. Even his Galra arm groped uselessly at her armor.

Ashrak leaned down over him until her face was less than an inch from his. Her lips curled back around her teeth, showing off a territorial display of canines and incisors as though they were claims to authority. She growled again, and Shiro could feel the heat of her breath ghosting across his skin, "you are no Paladin. Not any more."

The hand around Shiro's neck began to tighten. Not gradually, but very rapidly, squeezing the breath out of him. Every breath Shiro tried to suck in felt like he was inhaling ash and sulfur, his lungs unsure of whether or not they could take in and hold the oxygen. His hands were losing what little strength they'd had in trying to push her off, and he wondered if he was even still grabbing at her wrist.

Something dark danced around the edges of Shiro's vision, and in the back on his mind, someone was laughing faintly. Maybe it was Ashrak taking pride in her soon-to-be victory; maybe it was Haggar mocking him still for being a disappointment as Champion; maybe it was Ryou making fun of him for taking so long to come back to see him.

There was an anger in the bottom of his chest that he couldn't let go of, no matter how weak he was. His mother had told him that if he died with anger left over, he would become an angry ghost, and never know peace. He didn't care about the peace part - finding peace was a naive dream that he used to think would save him - now he knew better. But if he picked apart that anger, he could pull it into four pieces. Two of which were in the same building.

Still hovering above him, Ashrak smiled darkly and said something proudly in Galra. Shiro still had no idea what it meant, but he guessed that it was something to do with victory. Her face when he drove his hand between the seams of her armor was too priceless for it not to be.

The wrist of his Galra arm stuck out from the line between her breast plate and faulds, the faint white-purple glow shining through the cracks of armor. It took several moments for Shiro's brain to catch up to his arm, and then another few seconds for him to begin to process what he'd done. Telling himself that he'd let the gladiatorial instincts take over wasn't as reassuring as he though it would be.

A drop of blood landed between his eyebrows and ran down the side of his nose, a second drop fell on his cheek, and a third landed below his lips. Ashrak's grip around Shiro's throat lessened marginally, until her strength had died down enough for him to shove her off to the side. Shrio forced himself up onto his knees, coughing and gasping for breath as though he were trying to breath for the first time in years.

His warden lay beside him on the floor, one hand resting over the hole in her chest and the other hand limp at her side by the handle of her baton. Shiro found it vaguely ironic that she had been so reliant on that simple metal rod in life, but in death she could only hope it would save her. He rubbed at his neck and stood up carefully, telling himself repeatedly not to look at the body at his feet, or the blood dripping off his deactivated arm.

There were footsteps approaching rapidly from further down the hall, but he didn't have the energy to fight any more guards, nor the willpower to face his other prisoners. Shiro took a deep breath and walked to the door, counting off in his head right, left, right, left, until he didn't have to put conscious effort into moving.

He sagged against the doorframe and turned his head in the direction of the footsteps, straining to listen for voices, but catching only distorted snippets. He activated his hand again, holding it up to light the darkened space in front of him. Two pairs of white and black boots slowed to a stop along the far edge of his periphery, and he had to squint over the sharp glow of his hand to find their faces.

"Shiro?" One of the pairs of feet shifted closer, and the shadow of a hand stretched towards him across the floor, "Shiro, it's me. It's Keith."

A second, smaller voice, "and Pidge. We came to get you out of here."

To say that relief came in waves would have been an understatement. As apathetic as he looked, Shiro couldn't even begin to comprehend how overjoyed he felt. His arm fell dark at his side and he stepped towards the gentle blue glow of Pidge and Keith's suits. The two other Paladins were at his side in half a second, taking his arms around their shoulder and wrapping an arm each around his waist.

"Guys! We got him!" Keith called into the comms, pulling Shiro's arm higher up on his shoulders and nodding towards the light at the end of the corridor, "we have Shiro!"

The noises of congratulation were too loud to be contained by simply one speaker. It was all one big cry of happiness, and it quickly became impossible to distinguish one voice from the other.

"All of you are..." Shiro looked up at Keith's helmet in disbelief, as though the ecstatic whoops and cheers were only in his imagination, "I...I didn't think you guys would find me."

"Well, technically _we_ didn't..." Pidge remarked. Shiro knew them well enough to know that their eyes had gone to the floor as the end of their sentence trailed off.

Keith stopped them at the end of the hallway, stepping out only far enough to check if their path was clear before continuing to the right, "your Lion did."

Shiro looked up at him, a little lost. Last he remembered, he'd left the Black Lion to Keith. There was no "his Lion" anymore, there hadn't been for a long time. Specifically, he said: _If I don't make it out of here, I want you to lead Voltron._ Granted, leading didn't also mean getting a new Lion, but it seemed counterproductive for the arm to tell the head what to do.

He looked Keith up and down, eyes lingering a little too long on all the red outlines on his armor, "are you still piloting the Red Lion?"

"Of course. She's my Lion after all," Keith stated, as though it was stupid that Shiro was even asking that question. He looked over at him from the corner of his eye, recognizing the offset look of disappointment on Shiro's face, "can we not have this discussion right now?"

They came out of the guards' corridor on one of the lower levels of the factory overlooking the hangar. Two stories below, a small group of larger workers were still trying to ram their way through the door. They'd made a considerable dent in the metal, but it remained as sealed as before. The crowd had thinned out to a quarter of the size of what it was as many of the other prisoners accepted that they may not be getting out anytime soon.

Pidge stopped walking and looked over the railing of the catwalk, searching up and down the tiny mob several times. Their brows furrowed and their lips parted in an unfinished attempt to call out, but they remained fixed where they stood. Shiro watched them over his shoulder sympathetically, not having the heart to tell them that they were wrong again.

Keith grabbed their wrist and tugged them back, but it was the curt head shake that got them back in line. The prisoners were the last thing on the mission checklist, and it had been made explicitly clear to all of them that Shiro came first. Their second priority was getting out alive, and that one was currently still in the air.

Pidge shook their wrist and a map of the factory came up on their wrist display, three dots moving along the middle of one of the walls, "take the next door on - oh, this one! It goes straight into the loading dock."

The door was thicker than the rest, and the control panel next to it required either a keycard or an identity scan, neither of which they had. It rejected Pidge's attempts at hacking the security protocols, and refused Keith's handprint when he tried using himself for the identity scan. Eventually, the Green Paladin had become so impatient that they drew their bayard and speared it through the panel. The controls gave a dying buzz and the door clicked open far enough for Keith to wedge his hand inside and force it open.

The loading dock had been emptied since the last time any of them saw it. The main door had been rolled open and the few ships that had been inside were all gone. There was the small chance that the escapees would be able to slip away from Nadarè unnoticed, but a few junky transports filled with deserting prison guards was at comical low on the list of threats.

The three of them hurried down the stairs as quickly as they could; as soon as they stepped onto the floor, two bright specs began running up the horizon. That faint purring in the back of Shiro's mind was growing louder and louder, until all he could think about was the rumble between his ears. The closer they got to the outside, the more the sound became less of a white noise and slowly formed itself into a thought.

The same thing pulsed over and over again inside Shiro's head like a heartbeat: _Close. So close. Almost there_.

The Green and Red Lions met them along the outskirts of the factory and Shiro didn't miss the tiny nod they gave him while they stood by dutifully. The fact that the other Lions acknowledged his return must have meant something important, at least. Keith turned to Red and gave her a firm nod of his own, a confirmation that they'd completed their task.

Red leaned back on her haunches and roared up at the clouds, loud enough to make the ground shake beneath the Paladins' feet. The sound echoed across the empty landscape like a battle horn, and the Lion seemed quite pleased with her display as she settled back into a casual position.

At first, Shiro thought it was just that: the Lions showing off the rescue of their leader in a moment of pride. He felt a warmth crawling down his spine and out along his ribs, a familiar feeling that he hadn't felt in a long time. The pulsing thought in his head felt like it had gotten stronger in the last few seconds, as though the voice saying it had started yelling it.

_So close. Almost there. I'm coming_.

From somewhere in the clouds, there was a second roar - this one deeper and more profound compared to the Red Lion's. Shiro felt this one resonate within his chest rather than under his feet; it vibrated his ribs and tugged at his heart as thought it were already a part of him. He closed his eyes and he could feel the rush of the wind and the heat of the atmosphere as though he were descending from the sky himself.

Behind him, the ground trembled with the impact of something landing and the dust swirled and settled around the Lions and their Paladins. There was a low growl as metal shifted its weight around, and Shiro felt as though his whole body had gone rigid and numb. He turned around slowly and gasped, but he couldn't bring himself to spare the energy to close his mouth.

The Black Lion crouched before him as though he had never left her. Her eyes lit up like a pair of candles in a dark room and she lowered herself to the ground welcomingly. Shiro held a hand out tentatively, as though the Lion would bite it off if he got too close. Instead, her jaw opened and the ramp that led into the cockpit lowered onto the ground at Shiro's feet.

He glanced over his shoulder at Keith and Pidge, waiting for them to drag him back and tell him that it was all a sick dream. But it never came. Keith gave him a slight smile - the kind that, under any other circumstances, Shiro would be wary about seeing - and Pidge was giving him shooing hands towards the ramp.

Shiro took it as a sign and walked up the ramp, having to resort to telling himself _right, left, right, left_ again so he wouldn't forget how. Black's jaw closed around him and the cockpit door slid open, the sterile air rolling out around him as the display came to life and lit up the space.

Everything remained as he'd left it, everything untouched. He ran his hand along the back of the seat and over the controls, feeling a layer of fine dust come off under his fingertips. His bayard was still locked in its place in the slot where he'd left it and when he grazed over the hilt, it unlocked itself ad turned horizontal under his touch, but he didn't dare remove it. He sank down into the pilot's seat and let his hands drift towards the controls like magnets being pulled together.

His mind ran on autopilot as the muscle memory kicked in, pulling back on the joysticks and climbing through the air felt as natural as breathing. The clouds fell away around him like water through a sieve and he could all but feel the wind rushing around him.

Shiro felt his Lion's emotions rumbling through his whole body like a contained earthquake - the welcoming, the joy, the reunion. Her voice was as clear as a bell in his mind: _Home. Finally._

"Yeah," he murmured, as the Castleship came into view on the display, "let's go home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so Ryou Shirogane is an actual person. He's Shiro's younger brother from the original cartoon, but since they were identical twins, they were just rolled up into one character in later series. He did die in the show so I did use his death in here but it was just for name and face value.


	5. For He's Got the Power to Crash These Lands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, sorry for the long wait between chapters. I went on vacation and that was fun, and then I came back and trashed my car and that was less fun, and then school decided to dump my portfolio on me so that was the least fun and all this is to say that yes a snail could have written this faster. I promise i didn't abandon yall
> 
> But here we are, back at it with the angst. This chapter is a little emotion-heavy, so I tried to keep everyone in character as much as I could, but I apologize ahead of time for any discrepancies. Also: I still don't know how to write reunions (whoo) !

Leaving Nadarè was a surreal feeling.

Flying out of its atmosphere, it seemed so insignificant - an outcast, grayish purple dot with two giant, black squares in the center. The winds created odd swirls in the clouds that probably looked very beautiful to any other person's perspective. Shiro wondered how such a tiny place could seem so consuming at the same time.

Swarms of Galra fighters wove through the space between the Black Lion and the Castle like a cloud of angry wasps. They all trained their fire on the newest Lion in the area and Shiro had to veer a hard left to avoid the hail of lasers. The Blue and Yellow Lions flew up from behind and picked off the fighters along the sides, leaving the Black Lion to resume her kill streak from earlier.

Shiro straightened in his seat and adjusted his hands around the joysticks, the muscle memory of countless past battles returning to tell him how to move. He already had half a strategy worked out in his mind and if he could get the comms back on, he could get the rest of the team on board and they could wrap this up on an hour or so.

_Don't fight_.

He heard his Lion's voice in his mind - firm but gentle, like a mother cautioning her child not to run off too far. Beneath his hands, the controls shifted on their own, pulling away from his grip while Black purred delicately around him.

_Safe now. Don't fight_.

Shiro hesitated for a moment, but gave her the controls nonetheless, and folded his hands in his lap patiently, but anxious nonetheless. He never took his eyes away from the screens once and it took a massive amount of willpower not to grab the joysticks back.

Black dove headfirst into a cluster of fighters armed with only her jawblade, and Shiro watched in fearful awe as she took down every enemy like they were mere insects. She barrel rolled into another oncoming shower of laser blasts with enough force to send her Paladin's stomach into his throat.

Shiro squeezed his eyes shut and dug his hands into the armrests of his seat - he felt like he was back in basic training, going for his first ride in the centrifuge. Back then, he mumbled the lyrics to the song he'd gotten stuck in his head, or he tried to work out the weekly physics problem on the cork board in the hall, or anything to distract his mind from spinning in a circle at 20 G.

Except now,he couldn't think of a song, there was no physics problem, and he was getting shot at in a Lion that he had no control over.

He opened his eyes only after the constant rolling and spinning had stopped, when they were coming up on the Castle. The outer doors of the Black Lion's hangar looked completely ripped off (something that Shiro would be inquiring about later), but a secondary door opened for them with an oddly nostalgic feeling. It felt weird passing back into the hangar, like coming home after a long trip only not quite.

The cockpit settled around him as his Lion eased down into a crouch. She was prodding at the back of his mind encouragingly, pushing him to walk outside. Shiro obeyed after a second of hesitation, and pulled his bayard from it's slot as he stepped out of the door. He flexed and unflexed his grip around the unfamiliar weight as he proceeded down the ramp as though he was still expecting to hear Zarkon's voice in the back of his head.

Black's jaw opened to let him out and he put a hand on one of her canines as he put his feet back on a familiar floor, "good girl."

The doors at the opposite end of the hangar began to open, and barely a second later, Allura was sprinting across the open space towards him. She didn't need to call out his name; her outstretched arms were a scream themselves.

As she got closer to him, Shiro saw the tears rolling down her cheeks and her bittersweet smile as she eventually did call his name. He never recalled a time he'd seen Allura cry. She threw her arms around his shoulders and buried her face into his neck, sobbing, thanking the Lions and Altea.

After a moment, Shiro pushed her back an inch or two and put his hands on her cheeks, bushing her tears away with his thumbs. Her cerulean eyes were still swimming in tears, and it was too easy to get lost in them. Allura's hand came up and covered one of Shiro's, squeezing the knuckles with fervor. Neither of them said anything, but the tearful smiles they shared were enough for a whole conversation.

"Shiro!"

Lance and Hunk were running for him just as Allura had: wide eyed and grasping across the room for him. They slowed to a hasty walk the closer they got, some part of both of them scared that they might hurt him if they didn't treat him like glass. That didn't stop Lance from wrapping himself around Shiro's back and Hunk throwing his arms around all three of them from the side.

Pidge had a slightly less restrained approach. They hustled across the hangar and wormed into the group embrace under Hunk's arm, pressing their face into Shiro's chest and nearly bawling - something they wanted to do as soon as they saw him, but didn't have the chance to.

Of all of the individual reunions with their leader, Keith's was by far the most unexpected. He was the closest with Shiro out of everyone on the Castle, and yet he still lagged behind where everyone else had run. He walked around the other Paladins, stood next to Lance, and rested a hand on Shiro's shoulder modestly.

Coran hurried in last, proudly announcing that they were far enough out of the system to worry about any immediate threats and then promptly beginning to tear up and join the group.

For several minutes they stayed like that: hugging and sobbing and mumbling "we missed you"s and "we're so glad you're back"s into one one another's shoulder. Keith continued to linger on the outskirts of the affectionate display, trying not to let on just how bristled he was. He was happy - overjoyed, even - he had Shiro back, his found family was back together. He'd spent the flight back to the Castle convincing himself that he wasn't most happy about not having to worry anymore about becoming the Black Paladin. It hadn't worked, and instead he only felt selfish.

"Guys, guys..." Shiro eventually chided politely, lightly pushing back against the mass of bodies hugging him and wiggling out of everyone's hold, "I missed all of you, and I don't think you can ever understand how much it means to me that all of you kept searching for me. And now I'm-I'm _home_ , but..."

"But you'll need some time to readjust." Allura was the first to read him, her hands still held onto Shiro's, and she gave him a careful smile as she spoke for the rest of the group, "we understand."

There was a collective nod and a few murmured agreements among the other Paladins as they cleared away to give Shiro his space. He looked back and forth between all of them in turn, trying to muster as much gratitude as he possibly could into his expression. He could tell that every one of their smiles carried that sickly sweet weight of trying to stay positive for the other person - something he hated, but always kept to himself.

Shiro said a quiet "thank you" and gave everyone one last parting glance before simply walking through them and for the door. Part of him still expected someone to run after him, insisting on helping him, but no one did. There wasn't even the tailing of footsteps behind him as he continued through the halls to his room, although what surprised him even more than that was that he actually still knew where he was going.

The doors to all the personal quarters looked identical, but Shiro could tell which room was his easily enough. Aside from the fact that everyone else had made signs next to their doors, the weight in his chest when he walked down the familiar hallway grew heavier and heavier as he neared the end of the corridor.

When the door opened, it was exactly as he'd last left it. Nothing had been disturbed, not even the air. The closet door was still ajar by a few inches, the clothes were still hanging neatly inside, his boots were still standing by the door, and the bed was still made. The room, recognizing his presence, brought the lights up to seventy-five percent when he entered, and the air circulator kicked on when the door slid shut. Shiro took a deep breath and he could feel the layer of dust stirring.

Numbly, Shiro walked through to the bathroom and he caught half a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He found himself standing in the middle of the room, staring at himself in the mirror like he was someone else looking in. He was paler, more haggard, and his eyes looked so hollow - the stormy silver had been ground back down to a shunned and dull grey. He had a nervous habit of crossing his arms whenever he felt anxious, and he could feel his hands shaking on his elbows now.

"Oh," was all he said.

He pulled the threadbare shirt off over his head and let it fall to the ground at his feet in a dilapidated heap. Shiro tugged on the collar of his suit until the zipper either broke or began undoing itself as he pulled the fabric away from his skin. The cool air was a welcome sting compared to the stuffiness of the factory, and it felt cleaner in his lungs.

Shiro looked at himself in the mirror again when he'd undressed, still unfazed by what he saw. The myriad labyrinth of scars hadn't changed at all, something he knew he should be thankful for but wasn't. He looked older, aged up a few more years than he actually was. Nothing had changed much around the Castle, so he imagined he couldn't be gone very long.

He stepped into the shower and didn't think to adjust the temperature. The water came out lukewarm at best, but it was more comfort than he'd had in a long time. Shiro wasn't a fan of hot showers to begin with and he liked the feeling of freshness that came from taking cold ones. Or rather, he used to. Time in prison had taught him to wash as fast as possible and get out of the washrooms faster. He knew he should take a cue from Lance - a long, hot shower while singing Shakira was promised to do wonders for anybody - but he couldn't stand being under the water longer than he had to.

Old habit kicked in and he ran the bar of soap over himself as quickly and as routinely as possible, his subconscious still telling him that there'd be line when he got out because he was slow. But there wasn't a line, and Shiro forced himself to take his time washing the dirt and dust out of his hair and skin.

He shut the water off after who knows how long of standing under the spray, aimlessly watching the water flow down the drain. There was a clean shirt hanging on the back of his closet alongside the loose fitting pants Allura had given him when she cleaned out some of the unused bedrooms. They were soft on the inside and the closest thing to his old life that he owned on the Castle.

Shiro, honestly, had no idea what to do with himself now. He was standing in the middle of his room in his pajamas, his hair dripping water onto his shoulders while all his problems continued to orbit around him. The bed looked inviting and he was more than tired enough to fall asleep standing up, though how much sleep he was actually going to get was still up in the air.

He chose to listen to his body over his brain and sank into the mattress, letting the lights in the room dim themselves to almost complete darkness as he laid down. The only light in the room then was the blue accents around the corners and the only sounds were the faint whirring of the air circulator and the muffled hum of the Castle's engines.

The prison had been silent at night, aside from the occasional breath or whimper there was no noise. It was deafening. Shiro was always too focused on the big things to notice how comforting even the smallest sounds could be if you missed them enough.

* * *

Keith walked out of the kitchen, a mug of tea in one hand and in the other a plate of something Hunk made that he said was macaroni and cheese, but was pink. He knew that Shiro likely wouldn't be out of his room until tomorrow at the earliest, but the least he could do was make sure he had food next to the bed when he woke.

He minded his footsteps as he turned down the corridor with the Paladins' rooms, scared that he would disturb Shiro if his heel landed too hard. Already things seemed more normal, less empty, as though they hadn't almost lost the one thing holding them together. He stopped in front of the second door from the end, shifting the dishes around in his arms to free one hand to knock.

Keith was hoping that he could just walk in, leave everything on the desk, and walk out, but karma would give him no such luck. He tapped his knuckles gently on the door and waited for it to slide open, but it opened a tick sooner than he was expecting. That wouldn't have been a problem if Shiro hadn't been standing on the other side of the door when it opened.

He had changed out of the prison uniform, which Keith was glad of (seeing Shiro in it for a second time wasn't an image he'd wanted in his head for long), and his hair was unnaturally unruly, so at least he'd gotten some sleep in. He blinked down at Keith a few times before looking at him with a sheepish surprise, one that said he hadn't been expecting visitors, but he didn't want to be rude and refuse.

"Keith, uh..." Shiro rubbed at the back of his neck and shuffled to one side, nodding weakly at the inside of his room.

Silently, Keith stepped into the room. He set the food he'd brought down on the desk exactly as he'd planned, and continued to hope that he could leave as easily as he wanted to. The last thing he wanted to do was linger unnecessarily. He turned back to Shiro - who'd closed the door and was sitting on the bed, looking like a small child being called in for a lecture.

Keith gestured over his shoulder towards the desk and felt the awkwardness settle in between them. "I figured you wouldn't be at dinner, so I brought you some food. You don't have to eat it, but...it's there."

"No, uh, that's great. Thanks."

"Yeah."

The both of them looked down at the floor, with an entire conversation floating in the space above their heads, though neither one chose to acknowledge it. Keith knew what was coming, he'd known it five minutes after they'd rescued Shiro. It was stupid, and he hated that it was even an issue, he hated Shiro more for making it one. It never should have even come up.

For another minute, they continued not saying anything, until finally Keith broken the silence again. He turned towards the door and took a tentative step towards it, desperate to be anywhere else but not quite wanting to leave, "I'll see you later then - "

"Keith, wait."

_Shit_ , he thought. Keith stopped halfway through his second step and looked up at the top of the doorframe as though it was going to help him; he'd almost been close enough for it to open automatically. He spun around a little harder than he'd meant to, and tried to bite back his usual sharpness.

"I know that this isn't...quite the best time," Shiro began, sitting a little straighter. His expression had somehow shifted back to a fraction of the commanding look it once had, though it wasn't harsh, "but before, I asked why you were still piloting the Red Lion, and you brushed it off."

"What does it matter now? You're back, so you can keep being the Black Paladin and I can keep being the Red Paladin," Keith spun around again, hoping that this time the door would open for him. For the second time, it didn't, and he cursed the fact that the manual controls were still on from when the room was empty, "end of discussion, okay?"

Shiro scoffed under his breath, his voice rising with him as he stood up off the bed, "keep being? I stopped being a Paladin the moment I woke up floating through space. At that point, you should have taken my position."

He put a hand on Keith's shoulder and pulled him around to face him, but the moment the metal of Shiro's hand touched the fabric or Keith's shirt, Keith spun on his heel and slapped Shiro's hand away defiantly, something he'd never dared to do before. He glared at the other Paladin angrily, as all the aggression he'd been biding for six months slowly broke through. Absently, he realized, Keith had grown almost as tall as Shiro.

"I didn't want your position!"

"We don't get to pick and choose what we want. Not in war," Shiro snapped. He knew he shouldn't be getting so angry at Keith (even if they were both overdue for some good, old fashioned yelling), but right now his anger was growing to match Keith's flame for flame, "I told you to lead Voltron if something happened, Keith! Why didn't you just listen to me?"

"Because I didn't want to believe you were dead!"

Keith had all but screamed that - the kind of screaming that was nothing but fury that echoed off all four walls and ended in tears. His had always been a dry anger: the type that meant clipped words, cold jabs, and concentrated aggression. In all his life, very rarely did he cry.

Tonight, however, seemed to be full of exceptions.

Keith's eyes had grown watery in the long silence, and bloated tears threatened to run off his lashes like rain. He clenched his hands at his sides, feeling his nails digging into the skin of his palms like tiny knives. Perhaps unbridled insubordination towards the only family one had left was a side effect of being half Galra.

Shiro looked shaken. His lips were parted as though he wanted to speak but was speechless. He didn't have a dog in this fight and he was just now realizing it. Keith continued his tirade without even pausing for breath, and Shiro stood there, hanging off every word like a dying man gasping for breath.

"None of us did! There were moments when we all thought that, yeah, maybe you were dead and we just had to suck it up and go on with life! I didn't even want to go near the Black Lion, because I knew that if I took one step inside that cockpit, it would be putting the last nail in your coffin! But I tried bonding with her, because I thought I had to! Ask her! She didn't want to talk to me, and I didn't want to talk to her!"

"Keith, I—"

"We dug ourselves into the dirt trying to find you! We chased the most bullshit leads for about fifty galaxies before we'd hear some vague rumor in a trading post and then we'd run the other way! For six months, we were trying not to kill each other long enough to find you! For _six months_ we weren't Voltron - we weren't even a team! We were six idiots running around the universe!

"I-I didn't mean—"

"I took over this team because you told me to! I didn't want to but I did! Because you said that you wanted me to lead Voltron! Who gives a fuck if I didn't pilot your Lion, I did what you told me to! I had to be the leader, I had to call all the shots, I had to give all the orders, and I hated every minute of it! I spent half the time wondering how you would handle a situation, but I couldn't think of anything! Why? Because _I'm_ not _you_ , Shiro!"

Keith stood in the middle of the room, gushing rage like a broken faucet. His breath came out in short, ragged huffs like a mad bull, and his whole body seemed to shake with rage. The fat tears that had been dangerously close to falling finally lost their hold and spilled down his cheeks all at once until they dripped off his chin and onto the collar of his shirt. He was utterly indifferent at that point.

Again, Shiro reached out to Keith. He wasn't forceful this time, nor was he sorry. He held his hand out like the sinners in the medieval paintings, supplicant and yearning for help after their wrongdoings. In all honesty, he didn't know what he was expecting to happen - whether or not Keith would slap his hand away a second time, or refuse it, or accept it were all unknown variables.

There was a tight knot in the back of his throat as he pleaded, "Keith, please, you have to - "

"Don't 'Keith, please' me. You made a mistake, Shiro," Keith's voice was barely a growl, low and forced out between clenched teeth. He glanced down at the proffered hand between them and willfully ignored it, instead squaring his shoulders as he turned for the door a third time.

He opened the door with the manual controls this time, rather than wait for it to open automatically. As per the saying, the third time was the charm, and the door slid open silently. Keith walked through it without any hesitation and stormed down the hallway, to the right towards the hangars. There was a snarling in the back of his mind, though he had no doubt that it was him and not his Lion. She would be there for him, if no one else on this God forsaken Castle was.

When the door closed, Shiro felt like he'd had a hole blown through his chest. Keith was right, he had made a mistake. He though Keith could handle leading Voltron and he hadn't been; Shiro had been hoping he'd have a little more time to help Keith prepare for that role, but he hadn't. He'd thrown the person who looked up to him and needed him the most into the ocean without so much a a life preserver and a by-your-leave.

Not for the first time Shiro sank down to his knees on the floor, wrapped his head in his arms, and pressed his forehead against the cold floor. He felt the knot in his throat constrict and his eyes burn against his eyelids with the sting of hot tears. When he tried to breathe, it came in as a shuddering gasp as he realized how much he'd truly failed.

Crying now wasn't as gratifying as it had once been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies again if anything was out of character but I tried yall. Hopefully the next chapter won't take decades.


	6. Oh Here, Hear Him Cry Boy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW YALL guess who's sorry for the long wait? ITS ME. Also hey guess what im graduating in a month so thats cool. Also ive been sewing for like weeks straight bc im tryn do like four cosplay at once (2/10, would not recommend). But please accept this crazy long chapter as an apology. Second to last yall were almost done
> 
> Also, again another emotion fueled funland so if anything got too out of character thats my bad

Shiro had known Keith since he was thirteen. He'd known him through all the awkward mood swings, the temper tantrums, the lashing outs, and the silent rages. He'd seen every shade of anger that Keith Kogane could possibly possess, and then some.

He knew the short outbursts that happened when Keith was working on his hoverbike and caught a finger in the drivebelt - how he'd swear and cuss for a minute or two, throw his wrench into the dirt, kick a box, and be back working like nothing had happened five minutes later. He knew the barely contained outrage that came when one of the Garrison professors flunked Keith for that day's simulation flight because he'd done something risky and against protocol, even though it worked. He knew the unyielding fury in Keith's every movement when he fought Zarkon alone or challenged the Marmora again and again during his trials.

Shiro knew every nuance of Keith's anger like the pages of a favorite book. He believed that there was no force in this universe that could pull more anger out of Keith than he hadn't already witnessed.

He had been proven wrong again. Whatever went on between them now was not anger. Anger had been Keith going off on Shiro for leaving him in charge of something he wasn't prepared to lead. Anger had been Keith rejecting the Black Lion.

This wasn't anger. It was loathing. Abhorrence. Disgust.

Shiro had been back in the Castle for three days. Three days of everyone dancing around him like he was some fragile piece of crystal that would break easily. Hunk cooked his favorite foods (or replications thereof) for every meal, Allura made sure they stayed clear of any confrontations with the Galra, and Pidge and Lance kept the troublemaking to a minimum.

Everyone, that is, except Keith.

He'd avoided Shiro like one avoids the plague, always leaving the room when he walked in, or going out of his way to miss him if he had to go somewhere and there was the off chance he might run into Shiro. The first time everyone was going to eat together at the table again like a family had gone awry when Keith suddenly stood up and took his food with him back to his room, mid-meal, without prior warning.

Shiro was smart enough to know that this was actually his fault, he didn't beat around the bush trying to reallocate blame. He'd left Keith alone when he'd promised to stay once before, sworn he'd never leave again, and then gone and disappeared when things were starting to look up. He understood Keith's anger, but it didn't make it hurt less.

During one of their first nights in the Castle - when they had just become Paladins, when everything seemed so amazing and new, when they were still bright-eyed and unsullied by war - Shiro had been walking around the hallways rather than sleeping, and bumped into Keith on the bridge. He looked like he hadn't slept either, sitting on the floor, looking at his dagger in the light of the constellation maps.

They sat together and talked, like they would whenever Shiro would come into Keith's dorm with two cans of soda he'd slipped from the officers' break room. Keith had learned by his second week at the Garrison that soda meant deep conversations and some form of motivational speech. It was mostly variations of Keith ranting about how one of his teachers had done something that pissed him off, and knowing he couldn't tell them about it to their face, he'd bottle it up for a couple days until Shiro would be there to hear it all.

That night on the bridge was almost the same. There was no off-brand soda, no Mr. Peterson telling Keith about how he should run the simulator according to some specific rule, and no promise of everything being better by tomorrow. Keith had so much he needed to say, but he didn't know where to start.

The seven months that Shiro was scheduled to be gone would have been hard enough, mostly because Keith knew that he had to force himself to remain in check until Shiro got back. When the _Descartes I_ and all her crew were reported missing, he knew it was a lie from the start. He knew there was no pilot error; Shiro was one of the best pilots of his generation, he wasn't capable of making errors.

Keith walked into class the next morning with every restraint he'd created for himself over the last three and a half months burned away. He was snapping back at his professors by day two, on probation by the end of the week, and expelled by the end of the next. He stole a hoverbike from the motorpool in the middle of the night and flew out into the Nevada desert, for the one-room house his father had left him after he'd gone for cigarettes and never came back.

So was the end of Cdt. Keith Kogane of Galaxy Garrison Class 186-A.

Shiro distinctly remembered what Keith had told him about the other nine and a half months after that. He said it was like watching a moth run into a bug zapper: how it just keeps wandering aimlessly towards this thing that always hurts it again and again until it's too invested in the pain to stop; how the more it happens, the more someone on the outside always says that someone else should help the poor moth, but no one ever tries; how finally it just drops because no one stepped in to to help it.

_That_ had been nine months that Keith had been alone, and allowed to run himself amuck because no one was around to tell him different. _This_ was six months, where he had to put himself last and everyone else first, and became the bad guy when he did something against the will of the group, without anyone to guide him. It took Shiro two years of professional training to learn how to do that; Keith had two hours.

He was right, and Shiro knew it. He had made a mistake, and it was no one's fault but his own.

* * *

At first, everyone swore this was going to be the worst decision in the history of the Voltron Paladins, as well as all six of their lives. Coran had been cleaning out a back closet and stumbled across an old xylataf - the Altean equivalent of a guitar - and upon lamenting that neither he nor Allura knew how to play it, Lance had almost vaulted over his chair exclaiming that he could.

It took an hour of tuning and of playing the opening chords of "Seven Nation Army" ad nauseam, but Lance finally dubbed it fit enough to play like its Earth counterpart. He played it after dinner one night, when everyone had gathered in the common room after one of Hunk's remarkable feasts and been too stuffed to protest. It was something fast and in Spanish, but it had gotten everyone up and listening. The next couple nights he played whatever he wanted, but after that everyone pitched in requests. Thus the tradition stuck.

Like tonight, for example. It had been an agonizingly lax three days, and everyone was more tense that they were willing to admit. Dinner had been another dull affair: plates of food goo surrounded by no conversation and an empty chair at the end of the table. The only noise had been when Pidge had dropped their spoon on the floor.

Shiro had made a minor appearance though. He walked out of the kitchen with his meal and Keith had been the only person to look up at him. He glared at Shiro like a dog would glare at an intruder in his territory, boring through him and making it clear that Shiro was not welcome at the table. No one else looked up at him, probably worried they'd be the next victim of Keith's pointed gaze, and Shiro slipped back into the kitchen almost unnoticed.

After dinner, everyone filtered out into the common room for their last little bit of social interaction before they scattered off into their rooms. Lance picked the xylataf up off one of the couches in the conversation pit and sat on the floor with his feet on the cushion, signaling the start of another round of songs.

Keith sat on the couch by Lance's legs, with his head on the other Paladin's knee and his hands playing with the hem of his jacket - the gesture that was code for a quieter selection for tonight. Pidge was laying on the couch upside down with their glasses caught up in their bangs, and Hunk was sitting next to them with his head lolled back against the floor. Allura and Coran remained by the door, splitting their attention between a conversation about the Castle's nylopithian rotary sub-drive and the music.

Lance spent a few moments checking the tuning and giving the strings a few test strums before looking out at his small audience. The other three Paladins gave him blank shrugs, which meant that it was Lance's turn to pick the music. He was lucky enough to have his overloaded iPod with him, so he wasn't about to run out of material anytime soon, even though it took him a second to think something up.

He still wasn't completely proficient at the xylataf, so he had to watch his left hand make the correct chords, but his right hand was moving all on its own, playing so expertly it sounded as though he was playing two instruments at once.

_"Can you lie next to her,_  
_And give her your heart,_  
_Your heart,_  
 _As well as your body and can you lie next to her,_  
_And confess your love,_  
_Your love,_  
_As well as your folly and can you kneel before the king,_  
_And say 'I'm clean',_  
_'I'm clean' - "_

The door from the kitchen slid open and Shiro stepped in, but immediately halted halfway over the threshold. Six pairs of eyes looked over at him, but only five of them were positive. Lance and Hunk waved him over to sit with them on the couches, and he even went so far as to take a step in that direction until he felt the sixth pair concentrate on him.

He knew they were Keith's without having to even look up, he could feel the disdain spiking through the air at him. Wordlessly, Shiro continued on towards the open space on the cushions, keeping his gaze down at his feet. He must have crossed some imaginary halfway point because the moment he got close enough, Keith stood up and started walking for the opposite door.

"Keith, hey, wait - " Shiro veered off his course for the couch and began following after Keith. He tried reaching out to him before realizing that, not only was he still on the opposite end of the room, but that Keith would have ignored his hand no matter how close he was.

"Aww...where are you going? I didn't even get to the chorus yet..." Lance started to stand up, presumably also to follow after Keith, but he immediately sat back down when he saw the venom in Keith's glare.

His eyes had a weird habit of getting lighter when he was angry, and it was always easy to tell his mood by the shade of his irises. At that moment, they were almost a lavender.

"I'll be down with Red," he shot back, the virility of his tone heavily implied that he did not want to be followed as he hurried from the room.

The door hissed closed and once more all eyes were on Shiro, though this time he only felt a mix of pity and apathy. The pathological half of his brain told him to chase after Keith, confront him, talk to him, and iron out whatever wrinkle was between them no matter how long it took. The logical half told him not to, to give Keith the coping space he needed, and to approach the topic when both of them were ready.

Regrettably, Shiro went with the logical side.

He pulled his arm back to his side and let out a slow breath, feeling the static of his nerves start to calm as a familiar purring crawled into his mind, "yeah. I'll, uh...I'll be with my Lion too."

Shiro continued on past the other Paladins and walked through the same door Keith had just exited from, down the hallway that led to the Lions' hangars. The last time he'd walked this halfway had been earlier in the week when he'd left the hangar the first time, and walking down it now still felt foreign to him. The lighting felt too dark and the air felt too stagnant. The whole place felt eerie, as though he'd round a corner and there would be a pair of yellow eyes staring back at him.

The purring in his mind grew stronger the closer he got to the Black Lion's hangar, her gentle voice calling him to her. He hadn't been down to see her since they returned together; he was both grateful that she waited for him to go to her, but he was also apologetic for not coming sooner. She had technically been the one who'd saved him, so he supposed he owed her a little more thanks than what he'd given.

Shiro shivered the deeper into the Castle he walked, and somehow he was convinced that Black's hangar was the coldest of the five, despite how warm her presence felt. Her eyes lit up when he approached her, and when he greeted her, she crouched down and opened her mouth for him to enter.

Something about the cockpit felt different. The atmosphere of it had changed in a way Shiro couldn't quite place. It still had the nostalgia of returning home, but now it felt...tainted somehow. He sat down in the familiar seat and ran his hands along the armrests, feeling his Lion humming with life under his touch.

He reached out to her, expecting to be starting over from square one with their bond, though he would understand why. Instead, Shiro was surprised to feel almost the same strength as he had felt before. The feeling was too great to put into words - to an extent, it was like standing on a ledge, about to fall backwards, and knowing for certain that someone is there to catch you. As Shiro sat now, he could feel the Black Lion under him, ready to catch him should he fall.

Almost. There was always an almost. That one, tiny inkling that he could feel pulling at the back of his mind like a hairline fracture. It had to be Shiro's fault, there was nothing else it could be. His absence had started to chip away at what they had worked so hard to build, and he knew that that if he didn't immediately rectify it, it would be their downfall as it had been before with Zarkon.

_Not you_.

The sudden voice startled Shiro. Though he recognized it as his Lion's voice inside his head, he had been surprised by how vehemently she spoke. Her tone wasn't harsh, but she put a significant amount of emphasis on her words. The soft purring in the back of his mind had increased to a desperate cloying, as though she was one step away from forcing herself into his head.

"Not me?" Shiro asked, accidentally out loud in the empty cockpit, "what do you mean not - "

Shiro felt like he'd been thrown back into his seat. He remembered what it felt like the last time the Black Lion had done that - when she'd shown him her memories of her home world, of being created and watching the other Lions being forged from the same meteor, and of her Paladin - and it was the same feeling now. The controls and purple lighting melted from his vision and it was like someone was pulling him forward at a hundred miles an hour.

And then he came to a hard stop inside someone else's mind. He knew immediately it was one of the other Lion's minds, he didn't know how exactly but he knew. Everything was red and bright and when Shiro realized which Lion's mind he was in, he felt oddly guilty. It wasn't like he had asked to go rooting around inside another sentient, mechanical, being's head, but he still got the feeling that he shouldn't be here.

_You_.

This time, the voice Shiro heard was not Black's. It sounded younger, more wild, and none too pleased. She wasn't quite angry, but she was about to be. Shiro recognized this voice immediately, and tried to reach out to it, but something was blocking him. Hard. He'd walked into doors and walls on accident more times than he'd willingly admit, but this felt like running full speed at a concrete wall. It may have been all in his mind, but the recoil he felt on a physical level.

_Your fault_.

Something in the Red Lion's mind switched from seeing out of her eyes to some sort of internal view. Shiro stared down at the familiar cockpit, almost completely dark except for the faint light from the dimmed accents. Had Red not been forcing Shiro to look at it, he would have completely missed the dark figure curled up in the pilot's seat. In its dark shirt and pants, it blended in with the other darkness, but Shiro knew it was Keith from the moment he saw him.

He must have been sleeping, but he looked like he'd fallen asleep mad. His brows were furrowed slightly and his lips were set in an overworked frown. It made him look so much younger than he really was, and how he could look so innocent while struggling so much put a pain in Shiro's chest.

_Your fault._

Everything happened at once and the amount of suffering that had been condensed into that tiny fraction of a second was torturous. Months and months of suffering in silence was forced into Shiro's mind like a hose filling up a water balloon. He felt every stage of grief so poignantly he could tell them apart.

The denial was enough to make him snap under the weight of it, and how truly fair that it went on the longest since all six months had been spent believing that Shiro was still out in the universe somewhere. It was enough to drive him insane if he focused on it, the feeling of unraveling yourself to grab at useless little bits of hope that weren't ever there to begin with.

Then came the anger, and how apropos it was that the Red Lion was the guardian spirit of fire. Shiro felt like someone had lit him on fire and left him to burn, he'd never felt so furious in his whole life. The feeling was so great that he wondered if he'd ever be calm again, or if he would continue to be this raging mass of flame and fury forever. Even as the Champion, even in the arenas, even against countless other gladiators and prisoners, he was never this angry.

When bargaining came, Shiro latched onto it like a welcoming beacon, though the feeling itself wrenched at his heartstrings like a feral animal tearing meat from bone. It was a sickening feeling to go from being utterly merciless to pleading for mercy so fast. It was as though he was on his knees praying and begging for the smallest shred of help before a god that refused him. The rejection knocked the breath from Shiro's lungs with the force of a train and left him still crying out for help that wouldn't come.

Depression was by far the worst, but somehow also the most familiar. Shiro knew what black holes were, and what they were capable of - he was an interstellar pilot; he had to - he knew they were a void that sucked everything in with no hope of escape. He would wake up even now and feel like he'd already crawled out of one. But this time, it was so much worse. He could feel every ounce of everything he held dear being sucked out of his mind like a vacuum cleaner: memories, thoughts, mannerisms, everything that made him Takashi Shirogane was gone, and all that was left was his writhing husk, screaming into the void.

The acceptance never came.

_His pain_.

The Red Lion was growling in Shiro's ears with all the distaste and loathing that Keith had shown him over the last few days. She was not one to throw blame and accusations around, so when she shouldered it all on Shiro, it was not to be taken lightly.

_My Paladin's pain_.

For half a second, Shiro though he'd been removed from the Red Lion's mind, and he was relived when he expected to open his eyes to his own cockpit - everything had flashed back and gone completely silent. But when the view opened back up, he was still looking at Red's pilot seat, only now it was empty.

Then the door in the back of the cockpit opened and Keith came in...only something wasn't quite right. His image was flickering back and forth like an old reel projector; sometimes a translucent arm would move too far out of frame, or a barely visible Keith would take a lap around the seat before moving back to its place with the main image.

It took Shiro a while to realize that he wasn't watching just the one Keith; he was watching one hundred-fifty Keiths from every time he'd come into his Lion over the past six months. At first, he was concerned that that was how many times Keith had flown her for missions, but not all of the overlaid Keiths were in their armor, and only a few of them ever grabbed the controls. Almost all of them followed the same pattern: walk in from the back, sit down in the pilot's seat, curl up, and not move. Some of them paced around before sitting, others stormed in yelling at no one, one of them slumped against the back of the chair and sat on the floor wailing like a child, but they all shared the same nuances.

_Do you see? He suffers_.

The many moving Keiths all flickered out of existence, all except for one. One lonely Keith remained curled up in the seat, with his knees drawn up to his chest and his face buried in his arms. This one didn't phase around like all the other images, and it didn't flicker out either. The only time this Keith moved was when he picked his head up, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and pushed a piece of hair behind his ears.

If Shiro was still connected to his own body right now, he probably would have swallowed, or felt his stomach drop, or had some other feeling of harsh realization. He wasn't looking at another projection of Keith from the past months, he was looking at the Keith from a few minutes ago - the Keith who'd stormed out of the common room and gone to his Lion's hangar.

He heard the Red Lion's voice one last time as she forced him out of her mind and back into his own. He felt the pull of the Black Lion once more, pulling him back into his own mind with the same force one would use to yank a plug out to drain the bathtub. Everything spiraled down into a blurry mess of grays until Shiro felt the weight of his own, human body return to him. The Red Lion's voice followed him back until it was echoing through his head.

_This pain. He suffers. My Paladin suffers_.

Shiro gasped for air as his eyes flew open, his senses reeling from whatever had just happened. His lungs burned as though he'd been held underwater and drowned, but he couldn't seem to catch his breath, try as he might. Every limb had fallen asleep on him, and when he tried to move his hand, pins and needles shot up his flesh arm.

That's what Black meant. Shiro had been wrong: it wasn't his bond with his Lion that was the problem, it was his bond with Keith. He could still hear what the younger Paladin had yelled at him, and now he was wholly convinced that Keith was right - he had been before, but now the evidence was indefatigable.

Keith was his family, he was as much Shiro's little brother as Ryou was. He'd known Keith for almost seven years, he'd gotten him enrolled in the Garrison, he took him out to the diner in town for milkshakes every once in a while, he helped him fix his hoverbike when the engine overheated every so often, and he'd told Keith that even if he was a whole solar system away he'd still be there for him whenever he needed to talk.

Oh God, what had he done?

Shiro stood up from his seat and ran for the door without thinking about what he was doing until it was too late. Black hurriedly lowered herself down to let Shiro out, but the moment he hit the floor running, he realized he actually had no idea what he was going to do. He tried apologizing and it had blown up in his face, so if any divine power was going to bless him with superior problem solving skills, now was the time.

All five Lion's hangars were connected by several shortcuts, in addition to just going through the Castle. The shortcuts were nothing but a maze of hallways tangled together, and it was all too easy for someone to get hopelessly lost trying to go from one hangar to another. Shiro was lucky he was an insomniac who liked to take walks - he had the whole Castle mapped out and memorized as thoroughly as if he'd designed it himself.

He navigated through to the other hangar at a sprint, rounding the last corner and sliding into the open space only a few yards from the Red Lion's right front paw. Her eyes seemed to glow brighter as she cocked her head to one side and looked down at him, growling faintly as she contemplated whether or not he was here to do more harm.

"I know you're mad at me," he called, hoping that having Keith nearby would calm her down enough not to throw him though an airlock, "but I need to talk to Keith!"

Red turned her head back to its usual position, deigning the wall more interesting than Shiro.

"Please! Just...I just need to see him for five minutes!" He tried again, still with no reply. "I have to apologize to him! I have to...I have to tell him how sorry I am...and how wrong I was..."

Again, Red was unmoved. Shiro didn't move either, for a few more minutes than he'd hoped to, and still with no response. He decided that, as he had done so frequently over the past few days, that Keith wanted nothing to do with him. Therefore, Shiro accepted the silence with a heavy heart and no small sense of familiarity as he turned on his heel and walked towards the main door of the hangar - it was getting late, and he wanted to try for at least one good hour of sleep.

Beneath him, the floor shook like a small earthquake. He looked back over his shoulder to the Red Lion, utterly shocked to see her lowering herself to the ground. Her jaw opened and the thin, dark figure blending in with the shadows of her maw cautiously stepped out onto the floor. Shiro took half a step towards him before stopping; he shouldn't push this again.

In the bright lights of the hangar, Keith looked as worse as Shiro felt. His hair was tied back in a small ponytail that resembled a literal rat's nest more than anything else, and his shirt was untucked and hanging much too loosely over his hips. Somehow he'd always been paler than everyone else, despite growing up in the middle of the desert, and the lack of sleep and abundance of stress had only made him look more wan.

He addressed Shiro with the same pleading eyes and broken voice that he'd given him the night before the Kerberos launch. Any hostilities between them seemed to fade at the faint, "Shiro..."

Shiro didn't move, but the gap between them closed all the same. He looked Keith in the eyes for the first time in six months, watching the jitteriness in them as they tried to find something to focus on. There was a silence between them for a few seconds, a minute, a longer time than necessary. Eventually, albeit surprisingly, it was Keith's that finally spoke first. He couldn't hide the shake in his voice, but his pride was so far gone it might as well still be on Earth.

"Don't. I know what you're gonna say and I don't want to listen to five minutes of how wrong you were," though he tried, he couldn't bring himself to sound as spiteful as he would have liked. Keith wrapped his arms around his chest and shifted his weight back and forth on his feet, eyes now falling somewhere to the right of Shiro's, "I don't want to hear it."

"What do you want me to say?"

Keith swallowed, "nothing. Or something. Or...I don't know."

"You were right," Shiro said after a minute, letting the weight of the words fall where they may, "everything you'd said the other day, it was right. I pushed too much onto you, and I was - "

" _Don't_. You do this all the time," Keith all but snapped at him, "stop making everything a speech and just fucking say something normal! Just say you're sorry and it won't happen again - something!"

Shiro pursed his lips, but not in a judgmental way. This was like pulling teeth - he could tell Keith exactly what he wanted to hear and they could move on, but heaven forbid that he not be stubborn for once in his life. He opened his mouth to speak, but decided not to say what he'd been planning. Instead, he pressed his mouth into a flat line, closed his eyes, and took a breath.

When he opened them again, he had a fraction more strength than he did five seconds ago, "Keith, I'm sorry. For disappearing, for everything I put you and the others through, for not being there when you needed me to be, for forcing all this on you, for...for everything," he took another, shorter breath, "I'm sorry. None of it should have happened."

The static around Keith fell away, leaving him standing there petrified and looking at Shiro like a deer in the headlights. He knew it was stupid to be so amazed over such a simple apology, and yet he was. It was even more stupid to spend so much time fretting over his next words, but he was doing that too. He could say something blunt and simple and move on, or he could continue staring at Shiro blankly until the motion-activated lights turned off. He had to do something, but he was at a total loss. Not even Red was in the back of his mind trying to urge him towards a decision.

"Not everything has to be fixed right now. We can just leave it at this, and if you want to talk later, we can. We have time now...we can afford to slow down."

Even that left Keith stunned. It was the perfect solution to every scenario he'd thought up in the past ten seconds, and yet somehow it passed over his head like a frisbee he failed to catch. Surely it wasn't this simple. Surely there was more yelling, more crying on someone's part, more to fixing a torn brotherhood than just a heartfelt apology and a mutual agreement to "talk later".

Surely this wasn't all, but it seemed as though it could be.

For all he wanted to say, all the sleepless nights he spent ranting about everything he planned to say, for every minute he spent thinking up new ways to speak every little minutiae on his mind, everything he needed to get out when this exact moment came, he was utterly speechless aside from a languid, "...okay."

Shiro put a hand on Keith's shoulder, waiting to see if it would get swatted away and when it didn't, he pulled the younger Paladin in for the hug they both needed. It was still hard for him to see Keith as anything more than the scrappy child, who'd broken into the Garrison for mechanical parts because he didn't know better. It was the small moments, like trying to hug him and realizing that they're almost the same height, that reminded Shiro of how much time had passed, and how little time they needed to waste fighting. They were family after all.

"I missed you."

"Missed you too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lance is singing "White Blank Page" by Mumford & Sons. Bc it was foreshadowy and i wanted this boy to sing and play guitar bc i have fantasies too and have yall heARD JEREMY SHADA SINGING LIKE HOOOO BOY


	7. Be My Shelter From the Storm, My War is Over | Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOLY SHIT LAST CHAPTER WHAAAAAAAAAT i know i can't believe this thing is done. This ones kinda short ? I guess its more of an epilogue than a chapter, but hey, i did say angst with a HAPPY ending. I tried not to make it too Happily Ever After, but oh well. and yes this so very short cheesy addition took forever yet again...why? Bc i graduated yaaay and ive been job hunting yaay. So before im officially an adult, have some Voltron fanfiction, and also again this took waaaaaaay to long to write haah im so sorry

"This is dumb," Lance whined, the audio and visual feed from his cockpit popping up in the corner of Keith's dashboard like a bad teaser. He yawned into the back of his hand and slumped down into his chair until he was halfway off the screen, "it's way too early for this."

Keith stopped tapping his finger against the joysticks for long enough to minimize Lance's window and slide it further off to the right, "Shiro wanted us out here at eight, so we're out here at eight."

"Ooh, look at you," Pidge had decided to join in, their screen popping up right in the middle of Keith's display and bringing back the twitch in his eye. Pidge hadn't gotten their morning cup of Altean coffee, nor had they had time to wrestle their bedhead into shape - the messy ends of which were poking out the bottom of their helmet, "still wearing the bossman pants."

Keith groaned, audibly enough that he could hear it echoing in the other Paladin's helmets through the comms, and they quieted. Loathe as he was to put these three words together: Lance was right. It was too early for this. He didn't even know why they were out here; there wasn't anything going on on this planet (there wasn't anything _period_ on this planet, it was all just flat grass fields), but they were all out here sitting in their Lions instead of eating breakfast.

"Let's just wait. If he's not out here in a little bit, I'll call him. Happy?"

There were three unison yeses as Keith dismissed the other Paladin's screens from his own and leaned back in his chair restlessly. He wasn't patient to begin with and all the waiting was beginning to wear on him. He could only watch the wind ruffle the grass for so long before both he and Red started growing restless.

Though he hadn't been super pleased with getting up early for training (something that Keith did not maintain in his short time leading the team), he tried to keep an open mind when Shiro and Allura asked them to be in their Lions and outside early the next morning. However now it was the next morning, and they were missing a critical part of this exercise: Shiro.

Keith groaned again and tapped his heel on the floor repeatedly, hand itching to reach over to the comms and call their missing Paladin. He waited only a few more seconds before finally accepting that he probably had to call and wake up Shiro to get him out here, but the moment he moved his hand towards the communications controls, there was a ping on his screen as a blinking purple dot began moving onto the map.

* * *

Shiro sat staring at the doors of the hangar on his viewscreen, too nervous to even consider moving. It was something he'd done a thousand times before, but now he couldn't bring himself to do it again. He had been down this path before, the feeling that even if he tried his absolute hardest, he would fail miserably. Once again, he had the entire team's trust bearing down on his shoulders like Atlas.

It had been so long since he even though about attempting this, would it even still work? Did he even know how to do it anymore? If it failed, what then? Did he tell everyone "oh well, we'll try again later then" or did he confront Allura and tell her that it was fun while it lasted, but maybe she should find a new Black Paladin?

He heard the familiar purring in the back of his mind and tried to stop himself from fretting any further. It wasn't helping anyone, least of all himself. Shiro closed his eyes and pulled himself away from his worry and towards the warm feeling just on the edge of his thoughts.

_Trust yourself. You are strong._

When Shiro opened his eyes again, he wasn't surprised that he was still in the hangar, even though a small part of him was hoping that he would open his eyes and already be flying through the air. Naivety had never been his strong suit.

Shiro sighed, tightening his grip on the controls, "you're right. Let's go."

The Black Lion responded with an enthusiasm of her own as the hangar doors (the primary ones now almost completely repaired, thanks to Hunk, Pidge, and Coran) opened and she darted for the open skies with unbridled speed. Shiro made no effort to stop her; he relaxed in the seat, loosened his grip around the joysticks, and let his mind run utterly blank.

In the distance, the other Lions came into view, turning around to face their leader. There was a myriad of cheers and welcomes through the comms, but after all the excitement died down, there was still that one, resolute, "it's good to have you back," that was unmistakably Keith.

Black flew over the top of the other four Lions, and the moment her shadow had passed over them, they leapt into the air after her. Two branched out on either side in a loose V, each in their respective places as the limbs of Voltron as the five of them rose into the sky. It had been so long since any of them had tried this, that there was a universal air of uncertainty, floating like a fog over another, thinner layer of excitement.

Again, Shiro closed his eyes and reached out to his Lion, feeling her surrounding him and cradling him, until he opened his eyes and saw the sky through hers. He could feel all five Lions' ambition radiating from every direction, and within that power, he could feel the other Paladins' own eagerness. He could feel Keith's fieriness and his daring, Pidge's cunning and sharpness, Lance's calm and cool, and Hunk's support and strength all flooding into his mind. He could feel the Black Lion embracing her bond with her sisters once more, and her vigor and willfulness resonated in Shiro.

"Alright team," the words rolled off Shiro's tongue from pure muscle memory, "form Voltron!"

From here, everything fell into place as easily as falling asleep. The Lions had the transformation sequence built into their very cores, and the Paladins were as skilled in forming Voltron now as the Paladins of old. The shifting of metal and machinery beneath Shiro was such a familiar sensation that he didn't know he missed until now. He followed his own advice for once (something he rarely did, even on a good day) and visualized five becoming one.

Voltron landed on the ground like a mighty warrior standing up after a battle, the only other thing besides the Castle for hundreds of mines around. On this planet of nothing but grass and sky, it was easy to imagine oneself as more than just a small being in the vast nothingness of space. In the end, all five Paladins were larger than themselves again.

_United. As one, again_.

"Whoa! Did you guys hear that?" Lance startled everyone out of their moment, was apparently startled himself, "you guys heard that right?"

Hunk seemed just as taken aback by Lance, "yeah, yep, I heard that. In the back of my head. That was _not_ my Lion!"

Shiro reached over to his console, pulling up the audio and video feeds for the other four Lions' cockpits, plus his own, "relax. That was the Black Lion. She was trying to congratulate us, I think."

"Well what did she say? I just heard like...vague mumbling?"

_United. As one, again_.

The voice was clearer this time more than any other time Black had spoken in the back of Shiro's mind. It didn't feel like he was listening to a memory like it had, it was as clear as if there was a person standing behind him, physically speaking into his ear.

"She says we're a family again."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanna give a huge thank you to everyone who commented, left kudos, or bookmarked/subscribed to this story. Your guys's support has meant so much to me, and I'm so amazed at all the positive responses I got from this story. Thanks for sticking with it all the way through, you guys mean the world to me. 
> 
> (also I feel like this ending got cheesy enough to grate it over pasta so I might change it up later if I still don't love it)

**Author's Note:**

> This was unbeta'd so mistakes are mine.
> 
>  
> 
> [I'm on tumblr](http://wonkasbadonkas.tumblr.com)


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